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Salad

Fruit Salad Dressing

A sweet and tart dressing made with sugar, egg yolks, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, stir together the sugar and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Add the lemon juice and cook slowly over low heat, stirring constantly.

  3. Once the mixture thickens, add the walnut-sized piece of butter and stir until melted.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that cuts through the richness of the yolks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook slowly over low heat while stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble into lumps. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the dressing thickens smoothly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, butter. 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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