Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, oil or cream, and vinegar, with optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Pound the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs smoothly.

  2. Mix in the mustard, powdered sugar, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Gradually add the cream or oil and vinegar, mixing well.

  4. Adjust salt and vinegar to taste.

  5. For added flavor, incorporate chili or cayenne vinegar, shallot vinegar, or other flavorings as desired.

Finish and rescue

  1. Rub the salad bowl with a cut clove of garlic for a subtle flavor.

  2. If the mixture curdles, add the yolk of a fresh raw egg to smooth it out.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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 emulsifying lecithin bind the oil and vinegar into a smooth, thick dressing.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and vinegar together and add sharpness.
Cream or oil
Supplies fat that gives the dressing body, richness, and a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the fat.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or oil gradually. Oil added too fast to the yolk mixture can break the emulsion and curdle the dressing. Adding it slowly lets the yolk lecithin coat each droplet, producing a stable, smooth emulsion.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, sugar, cream, vinegar, caviar, clove):

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, sugar, cream, vinegar, caviar, clove. 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