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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing for Parties

A sweet and tangy boiled salad dressing made with vinegar, sugar, eggs, butter, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing for Parties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat vinegar, water, and sugar together in a pot.

  2. Beat eggs until light, then sift in dry seasonings while stirring.

  3. Gradually pour boiling vinegar into the egg mixture, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.

  4. Add lemon juice and cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until very thick.

Serve

  1. Add 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it body and a rich, creamy structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon.
Heavy cream
Adds lightness and softness when folded in whipped just before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling vinegar to the eggs. Pouring hot liquid into eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring gradually while stirring constantly tempers the eggs, so the mixture thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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