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Excellent Salad Dressing

A thickened vinaigrette made with vinegar, egg yolks, butter, mustard, cayenne pepper, heavy cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Excellent Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the vinegar.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Remove from heat as it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. While hot, add the butter, salt, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Fold in the whipped cream and lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the vinaigrette's flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set with gentle heat, giving body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, rounding out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and a light, airy richness when folded in whipped.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the rich mixture.

The step that matters

Remove from heat as it thickens. Egg yolks set quickly when heated. Taking the mixture off the heat as it thickens prevents it from curdling or scrambling, keeping it smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, butter, pepper, cream, lemon. 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 vinaigrette recipes

Sauce 33Dressing 9Egg 7Balsamic 6Mustard 5Asparagus 4 See all 12 →

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