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Salad

Salad Dressing Stock

A liquid base for salad dressings made by emulsifying vinegar, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Salad Dressing Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan until it just begins to boil.

  2. In a bowl, thoroughly beat the egg.

  3. Remove the vinegar from heat and pour the beaten egg into it, stirring continuously.

  4. Return the mixture to low heat and stir until it thickens.

  5. Add the butter while still hot and stir until melted.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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
Thickens the vinegar as it heats, giving the stock body when its proteins set.
Vinegar
Provides the acidic base that gives the stock its sharp flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished stock.

The step that matters

Pouring the beaten egg into the vinegar. Stirring continuously while adding the egg keeps it from scrambling. Egg proteins set quickly when they meet heat, so pouring in off the heat and moving the liquid constantly spreads the egg evenly.

“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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