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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with milk, butter, flour, eggs, sugar, mustard, salt, vinegar, and optional cayenne.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat 1½ cups of milk in a double boiler.

  2. Add an egg-sized piece of butter mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  3. Beat 3 eggs in a bowl, then mix in 5 tablespoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of mustard, and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  4. Slowly stir the hot milk into the egg mixture.

  5. Add ½ cup of vinegar and mix well.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Thicken the dressing as they heat and help bind it into a smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Its starch swells with heat and thickens the milk mixture so it coats the spoon.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and mild richness that makes up most of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Slowly stir the hot milk into the egg mixture. Adding hot milk gradually warms the eggs little by little. If it goes in too fast, the egg proteins can set in lumps or scramble instead of blending into a smooth, thickened dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, butter, sugar, 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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