Skip to main content
Salad

Cream Salad Dressing

A dressing made with eggs, vinegar, cream, sugar, salt, and mustard, thickened by double boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, and mustard to the eggs.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and cream.

Thicken and cool

  1. Place the bowl in a basin of boiling water and stir until thickened, about 5 minutes.

  2. Cool the dressing and use as needed.

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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, giving the dressing its thickened body.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, savory note and helps keep the dressing smooth.

The step that matters

Thickening over boiling water. Egg proteins set gradually as they heat. Stirring constantly and keeping the heat gentle lets the dressing thicken evenly without the eggs scrambling into lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

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

More cream salad dressing recipes

Sour 17Whipped 5 See all 68 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes