Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing

A thick salad dressing made with flour, eggs, vinegar, sugar, mustard, and butter, thinned with cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salad Dressing

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make a paste with flour and water.

  2. Add beaten eggs and vinegar, then cook until thick.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix sugar, flour, salt, red pepper, and mustard. Combine this mixture with the egg and vinegar mixture, and cook until thickened.

  4. Add butter and thin with whipped cream or sour milk as needed.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 its body and structure.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness, and helps the eggs set when heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp vinegar and mustard.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, stabilizing the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook the egg and vinegar mixture until thick. Eggs thicken with gentle heat but can scramble if overheated. Cooking slowly and stirring keeps the dressing smooth and creamy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, egg, vinegar, sugar, mustard, butter. 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 salad dressing recipes

Boiled 72Cream 68French 58Cooked 45Fruit 41Chicken 31 See all 528 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesFrench DressingFrench Dressing58 recipes