Skip to main content
Salad

Sour Milk Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with eggs, mustard, butter, sour milk, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sour Milk Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. To the yolks, add the mustard, salt, cayenne, and sugar.

  3. To the whites, add the melted butter and sour milk.

Cook

  1. Pour all into a double boiler and cook, stirring until creamy.

  2. Add vinegar and beat well.

  3. If the mixture begins to curdle, remove from heat immediately and beat vigorously.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Proteins set with gentle heat, thickening the dressing into a creamy texture.
Sour milk
Adds tang and acidity that gives the dressing its characteristic sharp flavor.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the milk and vinegar.
Melted butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking until creamy without curdling. Egg proteins thicken as they set with heat, but too much heat or acid makes them tighten and separate into curds. Removing the pan from heat at the first sign of curdling and beating vigorously helps the proteins relax back into a smooth emulsion.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes