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Salad

Sour Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with vinegar, mustard, sugar, egg yolks, butter, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Sour Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, salt, ground mustard, sugar, and egg yolks.

  2. Add butter and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thick.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Finish

  1. Once cooled, fold in whipped cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the base as they set when gently heated, giving body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the cooked base.
Whipped cream
Lightens the texture and adds fat for a softer, creamier finish.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thick. Egg yolks contain proteins that set when heated. Over high heat or without constant stirring, they can scramble and turn lumpy. Gentle, steady heat lets the mixture thicken smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

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