Skip to main content
Main

Salad Dressing

A vinegar-based dressing thickened with egg yolks, flour, and mustard, sweetened with sugar, and finished with lemon juice and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the dressing

  1. Combine vinegar, salt, sugar, egg yolks, flour, and mustard (mixed with a little water) in a double boiler.

  2. Cook the mixture until thickened, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

  4. Allow the dressing to cool.

Finish and store

  1. Thin the cooled dressing with sweet cream before serving.

  2. Store the dressing in the refrigerator for up to a month.

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

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

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat, giving it body and richness.
Flour
Stabilises the thickened mixture so it holds its body without becoming lumpy.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharp aroma and flavour that balances the richness of the yolks.
Sweet cream
Thins the cooled dressing to a pourable consistency with added richness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Cook gently in a double boiler and stop once the mixture thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes