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Salad

The Salad Dressing

A sweet cherry salad dressing made with eggs, sugar, vinegar, butter, and cherry juice, served over lettuce with cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the vinegar or lemon juice and butter, then beat again.

  3. Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until thick and yellow.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, dilute with cherry juice to desired consistency.

  2. Serve on a leaf of lettuce topped with 6 to 8 cherries and the salad dressing.

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. Cherry + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Vinegar + cherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar or lemon juice.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the dressing a tart flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the dressing.
Cherry juice
Thins the thickened dressing to the desired consistency and adds fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly. Eggs can scramble if they get too hot too fast. Gentle, constant stirring over indirect heat lets the egg proteins thicken the mixture smoothly without curdling.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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