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Salad

Salad Dressing of Butter

A butter-based salad dressing made with eggs, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, butter, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 of Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the eggs, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, and butter together until well combined.

  2. Add the vinegar and stir the mixture in a dish over boiling water until it thickens to the consistency of cream.

  3. If the dressing is too thick, thin it with cream.

  4. Allow to cool before using on 1 large chicken.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook over water and bind it into a smooth emulsion.
Butter
Adds richness and body, helping the dressing turn smooth and creamy.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharpness and flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Stir over boiling water until it thickens. Egg proteins set gently with heat, so the mixture thickens to a cream-like consistency. Too much heat can scramble the eggs and curdle the dressing, so keep the water at a simmer or below and stir constantly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, 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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