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Salad

Fruit Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, sugar, tarragon vinegar, salt, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,547 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a double boiler, stir together egg yolks, sugar, tarragon vinegar, and coarse sea salt until thick.

  2. Let the mixture cool; it will become very thick.

Finish and serve

  1. At serving time, fold in the whipped heavy cream.

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. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 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. Tarragon + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Egg + sugartop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it a rich, creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, herbal flavour that cuts the richness of the cream.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and a light, airy texture when whipped and folded in.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolks in the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken with gentle heat, but if the water is too hot they can scramble. Stirring over moderate heat keeps the custard smooth and thick.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

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