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Salad

English Salad-dressing

A vinaigrette made with hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, shallot, salt, pepper, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

English Salad-dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the hard-boiled yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, pepper, and minced shallot.

  3. Mash the ingredients with a spoon until smooth.

  4. Gradually mix in salad oil until the mixture reaches a batter-like consistency.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + shallottop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their lecithin emulsifies the oil into the mixture, giving the dressing body and a creamy texture.
French mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and yolk together and add a sharp, tangy flavor.
Salad oil
Provides fat that makes the dressing rich, smooth, and thick when emulsified with the yolks.
Minced shallot
Adds a mild, sharp aroma and onion-like flavor that brightens the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in salad oil. Adding the oil slowly lets the egg yolk emulsify it into tiny droplets, producing a smooth, thick dressing. Pouring it in too quickly can cause the oil to separate instead of thickening.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper. 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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