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Mustard Dressing for Potato Salad

A mustard-based dressing made with sugar, butter, flour, vinegar, salt, egg yolks, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Mustard Dressing for Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, butter, flour, mustard, and vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture while stirring briskly to keep it smooth.

  3. Thin the dressing with cream or milk as needed.

Finish

  1. Add salt and egg yolks, mixing well.

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity and forms the liquid base of the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as it heats, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dressing into a smooth, creamy texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps hold the dressing together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring briskly. Flour needs heat to thicken, and constant stirring keeps it from clumping or scorching on the bottom of the pan. Smooth stirring keeps the base even before the egg yolks are added.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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