Skip to main content
Salad

Cooked Cream Salad Dressing

A cooked dressing made with mustard, salt, sugar, paprika, butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cooked Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing base

  1. Mix mustard, salt, sugar, paprika, and butter in a bowl.

  2. Melt the mixture over hot water.

Cook the dressing

  1. Add the well beaten yolks and vinegar, stirring constantly.

  2. Lift from hot water to avoid overcooking.

  3. When slightly thickened, remove from heat and let cool.

Finish

  1. Once cool, fold in the beaten 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. Mustard + vinegartop 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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 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 dressing as they cook gently, giving it a smooth, custard-like body.
Cream
Adds lightness and a soft, rich texture when folded in after cooling.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and cream.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the base a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Lift from hot water to avoid overcooking. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but past a certain point they scramble and curdle. Keeping the mixture over gentle heat and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken smoothly into a creamy dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

More cream salad dressing recipes

Sour 17Whipped 5 See all 68 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes