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Salad

Cooked Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made by cooking eggs, mustard, sugar, milk, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cooked Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. In a cup, mix sugar, mustard, and salt, then add to the eggs.

  3. Stir in the milk and melted butter.

  4. Heat the vinegar until boiling, then slowly stir it into the mixture.

  5. If the dressing is not thick enough, place the bowl in hot water to cook.

  6. Add a pinch of baking soda to the vinegar to prevent curdling.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a smooth, creamy emulsion.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Milk
Dilutes the mixture and adds softness and body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the vinegar.
Baking soda (in the method)
Neutralizes some of the vinegar's acidity to help prevent the egg mixture from curdling.

The step that matters

Adding the hot vinegar. Pouring hot vinegar in too quickly can scramble the egg proteins and cause curdling. Adding it slowly while stirring lets the eggs warm gradually so they thicken smoothly instead of setting in lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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