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Dessert

Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with mustard, salt, flour, sugar, cayenne pepper, butter, egg yolk, hot vinegar, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix mustard, salt, flour, sugar, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Add butter, egg yolk, and hot vinegar to the mixture.

  3. Cook over boiling water, stirring constantly until thick.

Cool and finish

  1. Cool the mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flour
Thickens the dressing as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the dressing as its proteins gently set with heat.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the dressing.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds lightness, body, and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cooked base a rich, smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking over boiling water while stirring constantly. The egg yolk proteins set and thicken the dressing as it heats, but if the heat is too high or stirring stops, they can scramble and curdle. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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