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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, butter, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add the salt, mustard, sugar, and butter to the egg yolks.

  3. Bring the vinegar to a boil, then slowly add it to the mixture while stirring constantly.

  4. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

  5. Once cooled, stir in the cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and bind it into a smooth, creamy emulsion as they cook.
Vinegar
Adds acidity for a sharp flavour and helps set the egg yolks as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the emulsified base.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar to the yolks. Pour the hot vinegar slowly while stirring constantly. Adding it too fast can scramble the egg yolks, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, thickened dressing.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, sugar, butter, vinegar, 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.

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