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Salad

English Salad Sauce

A salad dressing made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, vinegar, water, sugar, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

English Salad Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 15 minutes until hard.

  2. Transfer the eggs to cold water until cool.

  3. Cut the eggs in half lengthwise.

  4. Remove the yolks into a bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the vinegar, water, sugar, and chopped mint in a separate bowl.

  2. Mash the yolks.

  3. Combine the mashed yolks with the vinegar mixture.

  4. Serve as a dressing for salads.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + minttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + minttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + minttop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together907 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks are mashed to form the body and creamy texture of the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the vinegar.
Mint
Contributes a fresh aroma and herbal flavor.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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