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Salad

Excellent Salad Dressing

A sweet and tangy salad dressing made with sugar, salt, mustard, white pepper, sour cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Excellent Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix sugar, salt, mustard, and white pepper until smooth.

  2. Add sour cream and vinegar, then cook in a double boiler until creamy.

Store

  1. Transfer to jars with lids and store in a cool place.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sour cream
Provides a thick, creamy body and a mild tang.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, bright flavour.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour and helps keep the creamy mixture emulsified.

The step that matters

Cooking the sour cream gently in a double boiler. Sour cream can curdle or split when it overheats, because its proteins tighten and separate from the liquid. A double boiler keeps the heat gentle and even, so the dressing stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, cream, 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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