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Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard‑boiled eggs, mustard, cream, malt vinegar, sugar, pepper, and salt.

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

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and place them in a bowl.

  2. Beat the yolks with a spoon until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, and cream, mixing well.

  4. Finally, stir in the malt vinegar.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 proteins give the dressing body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Mustard
Its compounds help hold the fat and liquid together, stabilising the dressing and adding sharpness.
Thick cream
Supplies fat for richness and a smooth, coating mouthfeel.
Malt vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts the richness and gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, and cream, mixing well.. Adding the cream and seasonings slowly while mixing lets the yolk and cream blend into a smooth emulsion. Dumping them in at once can leave lumps or a thin, separated texture.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Potatofits less well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, malt, vinegar, sugar, 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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