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Salad

Salad Dressing Without Oil

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, egg yolk, mustard, salt, sugar, butter, egg white, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Salad Dressing Without Oil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk and stir until thickened.

  3. Mix in the mustard, salt, sugar, and butter.

  4. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg white.

  5. Add cream until the dressing reaches your desired consistency.

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

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

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and binds it into a smooth emulsion.
Egg white
Adds lightness and body to the dressing when the cooked mixture is poured over it.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg yolk and stir until thickened. Egg yolk proteins set as they heat, thickening the dressing. If the heat is too high or stirring is neglected, the yolk can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth, thick base.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, mustard, sugar, butter, 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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