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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with mustard, sugar, butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 dressing base

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard, sugar, and salt, adding water to create a smooth paste.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, butter, and vinegar to the mixture.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until thickened like custard.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool before using.

Serve

  1. To serve, fold the mixture into 1 cup of whipped cream until well combined.

  2. Pour over any salad and mix gently.

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

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

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing into a custard as they cook and set, and add richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness and richness.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in at the end, it lightens the dressing and adds creamy body.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thickened like custard. Egg yolks set when heated, but too much direct heat can scramble them. Gentle, indirect heat from a double boiler thickens the mixture smoothly without curdling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, butter, egg, 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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