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Dressing for Chicken Salad

A dressing made with cold egg yolks, mustard, oil, and vinegar for chicken salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Dressing for Chicken Salad

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 ↓

Dressing for Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the cold egg yolks until light.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, black pepper, and red pepper; mix well.

  3. Slowly add the salad oil while stirring.

  4. Add vinegar to thin the dressing to your desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over prepared chicken.

  2. Garnish with sprigs of celery and hard‑boiled eggs.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the mixture, giving the dressing its thick, creamy body.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavour.
Salad oil
Provides fat for richness and a smooth texture once emulsified with the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to brighten flavour and thins the dressing to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Slowly add the salad oil while stirring. Adding oil too fast overwhelms the egg yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing separates instead of turning thick and creamy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Cabbagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, 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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