Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing Without Oil

A salad dressing made with egg yolks, clarified chicken fat, vinegar, mustard, and seasonings, without oil.

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 ↓

Salad Dressing Without Oil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt, sugar, mustard, clarified chicken fat, vinegar, lemon juice, and cayenne.

  2. Beat the mixture well until smooth and fully combined.

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. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks helps emulsify the fat and vinegar into a stable, thick dressing.
Clarified chicken fat
Supplies the fat that gives the dressing richness, body, and a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the fat.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifying compounds help hold the fat and liquid together in the emulsion.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well until smooth and fully combined. The dressing is an emulsion, so fat and vinegar stay together only when the yolks and mustard are thoroughly dispersed through them by vigorous beating. Under-mixing leaves the fat separating out, while thorough beating produces a smooth, cohesive dressing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

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

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes