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Cream Salad Dressing

A dressing made with vinegar, sugar, salt, cream, tomato catsup, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the olive oil, salt, sugar, and vinegar together.

  2. Beat in the tomato catsup.

  3. Gradually add the cream, beating it in until smooth.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat that gives the dressing a smooth mouthfeel and carries flavor.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang and brightness.
Tomato catsup
Adds tomato flavor, sweetness, and a thicker body to the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream. Cream added all at once to acidic vinegar and catsup can curdle or separate. Adding it slowly while beating keeps the emulsion smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cream, olive. 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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