Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Salad Dressing

A boiled dressing made from salt, sugar, flour, mustard, cayenne pepper, egg yolks, butter, milk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the salt, sugar, and flour in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the slightly beaten egg yolks, melted butter, and milk to the dry ingredients.

  2. Slowly add the vinegar to the mixture to prevent curdling.

  3. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set and add richness and emulsifying power.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the dressing becomes smooth and clings to salad leaves.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat while stirring constantly. Egg yolks begin to set around moderate temperatures and can scramble or curdle if heated too fast or left unstirred. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard-like mixture smooth until it thickens.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes