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Cream Dressing For' Celery

A creamy dressing made with eggs, cream, vinegar, butter, mustard, oil, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cream Dressing For' Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Scald the vinegar with the butter.

  2. Beat the eggs and cream together in a bowl.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the egg and cream mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Cook over simmering water until thick.

  5. Let it cool, then beat in oil to taste and add a pinch of cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Cut the celery as for salad and pour the dressing over it.

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set during gentle cooking, giving it a creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the dressing.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and cream.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder mouthfeel and a smooth finish.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that complements the acidic and rich elements.

The step that matters

Cook over simmering water until thick. Egg proteins set gradually with gentle heat. If the heat is too high or the water boils hard, the eggs can scramble and curdle instead of thickening smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

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