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Salad

Salad Dressing, with Butter

A creamy salad dressing made with butter, flour, milk, vinegar, lemon juice, eggs, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salad Dressing, with Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until hot.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth, being careful not to brown.

  3. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Place the saucepan in another pan of hot water.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, beat together the eggs, salt, pepper, sugar, and mustard, then add the vinegar.

  2. Stir this mixture into the boiling sauce and stir until it thickens.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the sauce as they heat and set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing's flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the vinegar.
Mustard
Adds sharp, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling sauce. Egg proteins set with heat, so adding the eggs to very hot liquid without constant stirring can leave lumps or scrambled bits. Stirring keeps the eggs dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, pepper, milk, vinegar, lemon, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, milk, vinegar, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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