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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, salad oil, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of the eggs through a fine sieve.

  2. Mix the yolks with salt, pepper, and mustard.

  3. Stir in the salad oil gradually.

  4. Add Worcestershire sauce and vinegar gradually until thoroughly incorporated.

Garnish

  1. Use the egg whites for garnishing the salad.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 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. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,844 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their fat and fine texture emulsify with the oil to make a smooth, creamy dressing.
Salad oil
Supplies fat that, held by the yolks, gives the dressing its body and richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Prepared mustard
Its emulsifiers help hold the oil and yolks together as a stable dressing.

The step that matters

Stir in the salad oil gradually.. Adding oil slowly lets the yolk coat each droplet and form a stable emulsion; pouring it in quickly can make the dressing break and separate.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Horseradishfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, vinegar, pepper. 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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