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Boiled Salad Dressing

A boiled dressing made with eggs, vinegar, flour, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, and optional salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan and pour it over the eggs, stirring constantly.

  3. Mix the flour, mustard, cayenne pepper, sugar, and salt in a separate bowl.

  4. Add the mixture to the eggs and vinegar, stirring well.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook over low heat until it begins to thicken, stirring constantly.

  2. Remove from heat and beat well.

  3. You can substitute butter for the salad oil if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat, giving it body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing and helps set the eggs.
Flour
Stabilises the mixture so it thickens smoothly without curdling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat while stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at a fairly low temperature, so high heat or stopping the stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps before the dressing thickens evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

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