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Salad

Salad Dressing From Sour Cream

A creamy salad dressing made with sour cream, sugar, mustard, vinegar, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 From Sour Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Stir the ground mustard into the sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and sour cream, mixing well.

  3. Slowly add the vinegar while stirring.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until it thickens, then remove from heat.

  2. Add salt, then strain the dressing.

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

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and give it body and richness.
Sour cream
Adds creaminess, moisture and a mild tang to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooking in the double boiler until it thickens. Eggs set as they heat, so gentle, indirect heat is needed. Too much heat can curdle or scramble the eggs, leaving the dressing grainy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

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