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Butter Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from butter, egg yolks, vinegar, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Butter Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a deep saucepan, boil the vinegar and butter together.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Gradually pour in the boiling vinegar and butter while continuing to beat.

Cook and thicken

  1. Place the mixture over low heat and beat until it begins to thicken.

  2. Slowly pour in the cream while continuing to beat until the mixture resembles cream or boiled custard.

  3. Do not let it boil, or it will curdle.

Season and chill

  1. Add salt and pepper.

  2. Beat the mixture in a bowl set over ice water until cold.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and vinegar and thicken the dressing as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.
Thin sweet cream
Adds moisture and mild richness, loosening the thickened mixture.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture off the boil. Egg yolks coagulate and curdle when overheated, so the dressing must thicken gently over low heat and stay below boiling.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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