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Salad

Bacon Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with bacon fat, flour, lemon juice, salt, sugar, mustard, eggs, water, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Bacon Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the bacon fat in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth, but not brown.

  3. Pour in the water and bring to a boil.

  4. Place the saucepan in another pot of boiling water.

  5. Beat the eggs and seasonings together.

  6. Stir in the vinegar to the boiling mixture, then add the beaten eggs.

  7. Cook for 4 minutes, stirring continuously.

Cool and store

  1. Cool and store in a tightly corked container in a cold place.

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. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon or pork fat
Carries flavour and forms the base of the roux-like thickened mixture.
Flour
Thickens the dressing when cooked into the hot fat and water.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the fat and sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon juice.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the boiling mixture. Eggs can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid too abruptly. Keeping the mixture in a hot water bath and stirring continuously lets the eggs thicken gently and evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, sugar, mustard, egg, vinegar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, sugar, mustard, egg, 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.

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