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Salad

Salad Dressing

A custard-like salad dressing made with butter, flour, celery salt, mustard, sugar, milk, vinegar or lemon, eggs, and cayenne pepper.

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

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth, being careful not to brown it.

  3. Let the mixture come to a boil.

  4. Place the saucepan in another pan of hot water.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs, celery salt, cayenne pepper, sugar, and mustard together.

  2. Add the vinegar or lemon juice to the egg mixture.

  3. Stir this mixture until it boils and thickens like soft custard, about five minutes.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Thicken as they cook, giving the dressing a soft custard body.
Flour
Thickens the butter base so the dressing holds together smoothly.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the texture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Milk
Adds liquid that loosens the base and softens the final texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture until it thickens. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat, but overheating can curdle them. Stirring keeps the heat even so the custard turns smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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