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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard‑boiled eggs, horseradish, sugar, spices, and thick cream, finished with cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 15 minutes, then cool and peel them.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the yolks until smooth with the grated horseradish.

  2. Mix in the sugar, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the thick cream and mix until smooth.

  4. Gradually stir in the cider vinegar.

Variation

  1. For a variation, substitute salad oil for cream and dry mustard for horseradish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
The yolks are rubbed smooth and add richness and body to the dressing.
Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that gives the dressing its character.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the dressing.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity and tang that brightens the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cider vinegar. Acid can cause cream to thicken or curdle if it is added all at once. Adding the vinegar slowly and stirring keeps the dressing smooth and evenly blended.

“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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