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Salad

Foamy Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made with eggs, milk, vinegar, butter, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Foamy Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk.

  2. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks until creamy.

  3. Add mustard, salt, sugar, and cayenne to the yolks.

  4. Pour in the hot milk and vinegar very slowly.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

Make the dressing

  1. Return to a double boiler and add butter, stirring continuously.

  2. Cook until the mixture resembles soft custard.

  3. Remove the top part of the double boiler and fold in the beaten egg whites.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the dressing into a custard, and whipped whites add lightness and foam.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smoother, creamier mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Milk
Adds liquid and body, helping form a soft custard with the yolks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour in the hot milk and vinegar very slowly. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Slow addition while whisking gently raises the temperature evenly so the yolks thicken smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, vinegar, butter. 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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