Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salad Dressing

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 ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the hard boiled egg yolks smoothly with the raw egg yolks.

  2. Mix the mustard with a little water and salt.

  3. Slowly combine the egg mixture with the mustard mixture.

  4. Gradually stir in the sweet oil.

  5. Slowly add the vinegar, sugar, red pepper, and cream, mixing thoroughly.

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water into a thick, smooth, creamy dressing.
Sweet oil
Provides fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the sweet oil. Adding oil slowly while mixing lets the egg yolks coat tiny oil droplets and form a stable emulsion. Adding it too fast can cause the dressing to separate or break.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

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

More salad dressing recipes

Boiled 72Cream 68French 58Cooked 45Fruit 41Chicken 31 See all 528 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesFrench DressingFrench Dressing58 recipes