Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Dressing for Fruit Salad

A thickened egg yolk dressing for fruit salad, sweetened with sugar and vinegar, seasoned with mustard, paprika, salt, and finished with olive oil and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Boiled Dressing for Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of 10 eggs very light with 2-3 cups of sugar.

  2. Place the mixture in a double boiler.

  3. Add 1½ cups of warm vinegar, ¼ teaspoon mustard, paprika, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Stir continuously until the mixture becomes very thick, ensuring the water in the double boiler is not too hot.

  5. Once thickened, remove from heat.

  6. Stir in 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

  7. Let cool and thin with cream as desired.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set gently over heat, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through the richness of the yolks.
Olive oil
Adds fat that gives the finished dressing a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Cream
Thins the thickened custard base to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Thickening over the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the water is too hot they can overheat and scramble, leaving lumps. Constant stirring and gentle heat keep the custard smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes