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Cooked Salad Dressing

A thick, velvety salad dressing made with milk, flour, butter, eggs, vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, and cayenne.

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

Cooked Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Rub the flour and 3 tablespoons of milk to a smooth paste.

  2. Scald the remaining milk.

  3. Gradually stir the scalded milk into the flour paste.

  4. Return to a double boiler.

  5. Stir constantly until very thick and smooth.

Make the dressing

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

  2. Stir in the vinegar.

  3. Beat the eggs.

  4. Stir the beaten eggs into the vinegar and spices.

  5. Stir the butter into the sauce.

  6. Gradually add the vinegar mixture while stirring quickly.

  7. Cook until smooth and velvety.

Cool and adjust

  1. Transfer to a cold bowl.

  2. Stir occasionally until cool.

  3. If too thick, add cream until it reaches the consistency of good 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 milk into a smooth, stable sauce base.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they heat and give it a velvety texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing's flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar mixture to the hot sauce. Egg proteins set quickly when they get hot. Adding the mixture gradually while stirring quickly lets the eggs warm evenly and thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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