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Bottled Salad Dressing

A preserved salad dressing made with egg yolks, sugar, spices, vinegar, butter, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bottled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the yolks of 8 eggs.

  2. Slowly add 1 cup of sugar while beating thoroughly.

  3. Mix in 1 tablespoon each of salt, white pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.

  4. Add ½ cup of cream or milk.

  5. Dissolve 1 tablespoon of mustard in a little boiling water and add it.

  6. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with part of the cream and add it to the mixture.

Cook and bottle

  1. Bring 1½ pints of vinegar to a boil and add 1 cup of butter.

  2. Once boiling, pour in the egg mixture and stir well for 2-3 minutes.

  3. When partially cool, beat with an egg beater.

  4. When cold, bottle and refrigerate.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, creamier mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the dressing and helps stabilise it against separating.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the fat into the mixture.

The step that matters

Pour in the egg mixture and stir well. Egg yolks thicken and can scramble if they overheat, so the mixture must be stirred constantly while heating to keep it smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, cream, mustard, flour, 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.

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