Skip to main content
Salad

Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, butter, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs hard, cool them, and remove the yolks.

  2. Mash the yolks in a bowl until powdered.

Make the dressing

  1. Add salt, pepper, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and melted butter; stir after each addition until well mixed.

  2. Gradually pour in the cream and mix until thick.

  3. Add vinegar to reach the desired consistency.

Chill

  1. Chill the dressing in the refrigerator for one hour before using.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying proteins bind the cream and butter into a smooth, thick dressing.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth, mellow body.
Sweet cream
Supplies fat and moisture, and thickens into a rich, creamy texture when blended with the yolks.
Mustard
Its emulsifiers help hold the fat and liquid together and add a sharp, savory note.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich dressing and lets you adjust its thickness.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the cream. Adding cream slowly lets the yolk and butter emulsion absorb it evenly. Pouring it all at once can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing thin and greasy instead of thick.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, vinegar, pepper, sauce, 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 cream salad dressing recipes

Sour 17Whipped 5 See all 68 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes