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Dressing for Meat

A butter, mustard, and egg yolk dressing spread on bread and topped with meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Dressing for Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the butter, salad oil, mustard, egg yolk, and salt. Mix well until smooth.

  2. Spread the dressing evenly over thin slices of bread.

Assemble

  1. Top with your choice of meat.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable body to the dressing.
Egg yolk
Acts as an emulsifier, helping the butter and oil combine into a smooth dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Mix well until smooth. Butter is solid at room temperature and the oil and egg yolk must be fully blended for an even emulsion. Under-mixing leaves streaks of butter and uneven texture in the spread.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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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