Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressings

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, butter, and vinegar, suitable for cabbage or lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Salad Dressings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, pepper, sugar, mustard, and butter; mix well.

  3. Stir in the vinegar.

  4. Place the bowl in a kettle of hot water and stir constantly until the mixture thickens.

  5. Let it cool before using.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over 1 quart of finely chopped cabbage while hot and mix thoroughly.

  2. Serve cold. This dressing is also great for lettuce.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 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. Sugar + vinegartop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and emulsify it into a smooth, creamy base when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Thickening over hot water. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Stirring constantly over gentle hot water keeps the heat even so the dressing becomes smooth and thick rather than lumpy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

More salad dressing recipes

Boiled 72Cream 68French 58Cooked 45Fruit 41Chicken 31 See all 528 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesFrench DressingFrench Dressing58 recipes