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Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with flour, egg, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, butter, and optional oil, egg yolks, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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

Make the cooked dressing

  1. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar and butter.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, egg, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add the mixed ingredients to the saucepan and let it boil until thick.

  4. If desired, thin the dressing with a little cream.

Make the second dressing

  1. For the second dressing, rub the hard-boiled egg yolks until smooth.

  2. Mix in the English mustard, salt, raw egg yolks, and sugar.

  3. Gradually add fresh sweet oil until the mixture thickens.

  4. Add vinegar until the dressing reaches your desired consistency.

  5. If you want more heat, add a little cayenne pepper.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the cooked dressing set as it thickens.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked dressing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form a smooth, creamy base that emulsifies with the oil.
Raw egg yolks
Act as an emulsifier, helping the oil and vinegar bind into a thick dressing.
Fresh sweet oil
Provides fat and body, thickening the dressing as it is added gradually.

The step that matters

Gradually add the oil. Adding oil slowly lets the yolks emulsify it into droplets; adding it too fast can break the mixture so it separates and fails to thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

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