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Salad Dressing Without Cream or Oil

A salad dressing made with eggs, butter, corn starch, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, and vinegar, thickened by a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Without Cream or Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the egg whites.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Combine the beaten whites and yolks.

  4. Add salt, sugar, and mustard to the eggs.

  5. Rub the butter and corn-starch together to form a cream.

  6. Stir the butter-corn starch cream into the egg mixture.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the bowl in a saucepan of hot water.

  2. Stir constantly until the dressing thickens.

  3. Remove the bowl from the heat.

  4. Gradually pour in the vinegar while stirring continuously.

  5. If the vinegar is too strong, dilute it with a little water.

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

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

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mustard + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites and yolks thicken on gentle heat, giving the dressing its body.
Butter
Adds richness and smooths the texture of the dressing.
Corn-starch
Thickens the dressing as it heats, helping it hold together.
Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity that defines the dressing.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp flavor that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the dressing thickens. Egg proteins set when heated, and over-heating or stopping to stir can cause them to curdle or scramble, leaving lumps instead of a smooth dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

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