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Salad

Salad Dressing with Oil

A salad dressing made with egg yolk, raw egg, oil, mustard, salt, and optionally vinegar or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Salad Dressing with Oil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the yolk of one hard-boiled egg and one raw egg until smooth in an ice-cold bowl.

  2. Gradually add ¾ cup of oil, a few drops at a time, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  3. When half the oil is used, add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  4. Continue adding the remaining oil.

  5. If the sauce becomes too thick, thin it with vinegar or lemon juice.

  6. Stir in ½ teaspoon of English mustard.

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. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify the oil and water into a thick, stable sauce.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing, giving richness and body as it emulsifies.
English mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added a few drops at a time at first, so the egg yolk can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion and the sauce separates.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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