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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, oil or cream, vinegar, and optional flavorings.

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

Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

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

  2. Mix in the mustard, sugar, and salt.

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

  4. Adjust salt and vinegar to taste.

Flavor and serve

  1. For added flavor, consider adding chili vinegar or eschalot vinegar.

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

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 + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 power bind the cream or oil and vinegar into a smooth dressing.
Mustard
Its compounds help stabilize the emulsion and add a sharp, pungent bite.
Cream or pure oil
Supplies the fat that gives the dressing its richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream or oil and vinegar, mixing well. Adding the fat and acid slowly while mixing lets the egg yolk coat tiny droplets so they stay suspended. Pouring too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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