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Salad

Fruit Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, sugar, mustard, butter, vinegar, and spices, thinned with whipped 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 ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, cream together the egg yolks, sugar, and mustard.

  2. Add salt, red pepper, butter, and vinegar.

  3. Cook over low heat until thick, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, thin the dressing to the right consistency with 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 set, giving it a creamy, rich body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through its richness.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dressing smooth and silky.
Whipped cream
Thins the cooked dressing to the desired consistency while adding lightness.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until thick, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble into lumps. Constant stirring and low heat spread the heat evenly and keep the dressing smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, butter, 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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