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Salad

Salad Dressing Without Oil

A creamy, oil-free salad dressing made with sour cream, vinegar, eggs, butter, sugar, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Salad Dressing Without Oil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine sour cream, vinegar, eggs, butter, sugar, mustard, and salt in a double boiler.

  2. Stir constantly until the mixture boils.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Adds creamy body and a mild tang that gives the dressing its richness.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the richness and brightens the flavour.
Eggs
Their proteins set as they heat, thickening the dressing into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the acidity of the vinegar and mustard.
Mustard
Contributes pungent flavour and helps hold the dressing together as an emulsion.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly until the mixture boils. Egg proteins thicken gently with steady heat and stirring. If heat is uneven or stirring stops, the eggs can scramble or curdle, leaving the dressing lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

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