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Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, butter, olive oil, vinegar, lemon, mustard, salt, red pepper, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

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 ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine egg yolks, melted butter, olive oil, coarse sea salt, red pepper, mustard, vinegar, and lemon juice in a bowl.

  2. Cook the mixture in a double boiler, stirring constantly.

  3. Fold in the whipped cream gently 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken and emulsify the dressing, binding the fats and liquids into a smooth body.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Olive oil
Adds fat and body, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and balances the richness.
Cream
Adds lightness and softness when folded in at the end.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture in a double boiler, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken gently at moderate heat, but direct or excessive heat can scramble them into lumps. The double boiler and constant stirring keep the heat even so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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