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Salad

Cream Salad Dressing

A dressing made with flour, mustard, salt, sugar, butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. In a bowl, mix the flour, mustard, salt, and sugar with the butter.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the cream and then the vinegar.

Cook and chill

  1. Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens.

  2. Strain if necessary and chill before serving.

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

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

  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 cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Flour
Helps stabilise the dressing so it holds its body when cooked.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens. Egg yolks set when heated, but too much heat can scramble them into lumps. Gentle heat over hot water, with steady stirring, lets the yolks thicken the dressing smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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