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Salad

Fruit Salad Dressing

A sweet and tangy dressing made with eggs, sugar, vinegar, butter, flour, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Mix in the salt and sugar.

  3. Add the vinegar or lemon juice and boiling water.

  4. In a hot mixture, add butter and stir continuously.

  5. Mix the flour with a little cold water, then add to the mixture.

  6. Stir constantly until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, fold in the whipped 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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 the dressing as they set with heat, giving it body and richness.
Flour
Stabilises the dressing by thickening it as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the acid.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a soft, airy texture when folded in.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until thickened. Egg proteins can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats or sits still, so constant stirring keeps the heat even and the texture smooth.

“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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