Skip to main content
Salad

Bottled Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with eggs, butter, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Bottled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the black pepper, sugar, salt, cream, mustard, and cayenne to the egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

  3. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan and add the butter, stirring until melted.

  4. Bring the vinegar and butter mixture to a boil, then pour it over the egg mixture while stirring well.

Cool and store

  1. Allow the dressing to cool, then bottle it and store in a cool place.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks emulsify and thicken the dressing as they are gently heated, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its tang and helps keep it stable.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, rounding out the texture of the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot vinegar and butter mixture over the egg mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Pouring slowly while stirring constantly tempers the eggs so the dressing thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, sugar, cream, butter, 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