Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing

A dressing made from hard-boiled eggs, oil or butter, mustard, vinegar, and seasonings, garnished with egg whites.

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

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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs for 12 minutes, then place them in cold water until completely cool.

  2. Rub the yolks through a sieve into a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Mix in the water or cream and the oil or melted butter until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the salt or sugar and mustard, mixing until smooth.

  3. Slowly incorporate the vinegar, mixing thoroughly.

Garnish and serve

  1. Chop the white of the egg and use it to garnish the salad.

  2. Let the dressing sit at the bottom of the bowl until ready to serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 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. 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks provide the rich, creamy body that the dressing is built on.
Oil or melted butter
Fat that emulsifies with the yolks to give the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Prepared mustard
Its emulsifiers help hold the oil and liquids together in a stable dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and fat.

The step that matters

Adding the oil or butter to the yolks. Fat must be blended into the yolks gradually and thoroughly so the mixture forms a smooth emulsion rather than separating into a greasy, broken dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  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 egg, cream, butter, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesBoiled Salad DressingBoiled Salad Dressing67 recipes