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Salad Sauce

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, béchamel, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Salad Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Add the mustard and mix well.

  3. Gradually incorporate the salad oil until smooth.

  4. Season with white pepper, cayenne, salt, and a dusting of sugar.

  5. Stir in the thick béchamel, tarragon vinegar, chili vinegar, and common vinegar.

  6. Mix in the cream until well combined.

  7. For fish salads, add a few drops of essence of anchovies and garnish with chopped parsley.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and form the body of the dressing.
Salad oil
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture as it emulsifies.
Thick béchamel sauce
Thickens the dressing and gives it a creamy body.
Cream
Adds moisture and softens the flavour and texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, aromatic note.

The step that matters

Gradually incorporate the salad oil. Adding oil slowly lets the egg yolk emulsify it into the mixture. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated instead of smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, sugar, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, 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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