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Salad

Salad Dressing No. 1

A creamy salad dressing made with eggs, butter, cream, mustard, sugar, vinegar, chicken, celery, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. In a double boiler, combine the melted butter, cream, mustard mixed with sugar, and vinegar.

  3. Cook over hot water until the mixture thickens to a custard consistency.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pick the meat from the hot chicken and chop it.

  2. Mix the chicken with the chopped celery, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Mustard + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, thickening the dressing into a custard.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, coating mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps hold the fat and liquid together.
Cooked chicken
Supplies the protein and bulk of the salad.

The step that matters

Cook the custard over hot water. Egg proteins set gently as they warm. If the heat is too high or the mixture is left too long, the eggs can scramble or curdle, leaving a grainy dressing instead of a smooth custard. Gentle, steady heat from the hot water bath keeps it silky.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, cream, mustard, sugar, vinegar, chicken. 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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