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Salad

German Salad Dressing for Lettuce

A creamy German salad dressing for lettuce made with thick cream, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

German Salad Dressing for Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the cream until stiff.

  2. Add salt and pepper.

  3. Slowly mix in the lemon juice while continuing to beat.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Thick cream
Whipped into stiff foam, it gives the dressing its body and light, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the dressing a bright, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Slowly mix in the lemon juice while beating. Acid can weaken whipped cream and make it thin or grainy. Adding the juice slowly while beating lets the foam absorb it gradually so the dressing stays thick.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, pepper. 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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