Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard‑boiled eggs, mustard, butter, cream, salt, cayenne, anchovy or Worcestershire sauce, and vinegar.

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

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 ↓

Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard boiled eggs and mash them finely.

  2. Mix in the mustard and melted butter.

  3. Stir in the thick cream and salt.

  4. Add cayenne pepper and anchovy or Worcestershire sauce.

  5. Gradually add vinegar until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Serve

  1. Pour over prepared lettuce.

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Mashed yolks form the body of the dressing and thicken it.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the dressing.
Melted butter
Adds fat that makes the dressing silky and rich.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the fat into the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Gradually add vinegar until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Adding vinegar slowly lets the mashed yolks, mustard and fat blend into a stable, smooth emulsion. Adding it all at once can thin the dressing or make it look split.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, cream, pepper, anchovy, 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.

More cream dressing recipes

Sour 24Sweet 3Whipped 3 See all 48 →

You might also like

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