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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, mustard, sugar, vinegar, celery salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth, being careful not to brown.

  3. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

Thicken and finish

  1. Place the saucepan in another pan of hot water.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, celery salt, cayenne pepper, sugar, and mustard together.

  3. Add the vinegar or lemon juice to the egg mixture.

  4. Stir this mixture into the saucepan until it boils and thickens like soft custard, about five minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Proteins set as they heat, thickening the mixture into a soft custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the dressing its creamy body.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the acid and mustard.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the hot sauce. Egg proteins can curdle if they get too hot too fast. Adding the egg mixture gradually while stirring, and keeping the sauce over gentle heat in a hot-water bath, lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mustard, sugar, milk, vinegar, egg, pepper. 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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