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Corn Starch Dressing

A vinaigrette thickened with corn starch, egg yolks, oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Corn Starch Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix corn starch and vinegar thoroughly.

  2. Add boiling water and cook over boiling water until very thick and smooth.

  3. Add egg yolks when ready to take from the fire.

Finish the dressing

  1. When cold, add oil, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the dressing into a smooth, stable body as it cooks in boiling water.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsifying power, helping the oil blend smoothly into the base.
Oil
Supplies fat and a rich, smooth mouthfeel to the finished dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the dressing.

The step that matters

Add egg yolks when ready to take from the fire. Adding yolks to a very hot starch mixture can scramble them. Removing the pan from the heat first lets the yolks blend in smoothly and thicken gently without curdling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, corn, pepper):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, corn, pepper. 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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