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Salad

Cream Salad Dressing

A custard-like dressing made with cream, butter, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, eggs, vinegar, and whipped cream.

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 ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Heat 2 cups of cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add a walnut-sized piece of butter to the hot cream.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix 3 teaspoons of mustard, 4 teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper with a little cold cream until smooth.

  4. Beat 4 eggs until light and add to the mustard mixture.

  5. Combine the egg mixture with the hot cream and cook gently like boiled custard, removing from heat before it curdles.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture through a sieve and add ⅔ cup of vinegar while hot, beating until cool.

  2. Fold in ½ cup of whipped cream just before serving.

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

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

  3. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook gently and help bind the dressing together.
Cream
Provides richness and body, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cream and eggs.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and airy texture when folded in just before serving.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture gently. Egg proteins set and curdle if heated too quickly or too long, so the custard must be cooked gently and removed from heat before it thickens too far or breaks.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, mustard, sugar, pepper, 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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