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Salad

Hot Salad Dressing

A hot dressing made with eggs, pepper, salt, mustard, butter, cream, and vinegar, poured over cabbage, lettuce, or potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Hot Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine eggs, white pepper, salt, mustard, melted butter, sweet cream, and vinegar.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over cabbage, lettuce, or sliced or chopped potatoes.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so high heat or no stirring can scramble the eggs and leave lumps instead of a smooth, creamy dressing.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, butter, cream, 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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