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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette made by boiling butter, flour, and seasonings, then whisking into egg yolks and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the mixture to the slightly beaten egg yolks.

  3. Beat the butter and flour together to form a paste.

Cook and finish

  1. Heat the paste on the stove until it bubbles.

  2. Add the diluted vinegar.

  3. Stir in the egg mixture.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Beat in enough whipped cream to achieve the desired consistency.

  6. Slowly add the lemon juice last.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the dressing base.
Flour
Thickens the butter paste so the dressing becomes stable and creamy.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sugar and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if they get too hot too quickly. Adding them to the warm paste and removing the pan from heat at the right moment keeps the dressing smooth and thickened rather than curdled.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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