Skip to main content
Salad

Rich Salad Dressing

A thick, creamy dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, lemon juice, vinegar, oil, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rich Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, and salt until very light and thick.

  2. Slowly add a few drops of oil at a time while continuing to beat until the mixture becomes very thick.

  3. Once thick, add the oil more rapidly, and when it gets hard to beat, add a little vinegar.

  4. Continue adding the remaining oil and vinegar until the mixture is very thick.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice and whipped cream.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill in the refrigerator for a few hours before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 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. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 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
Emulsify the oil into the mixture, creating a thick, stable dressing body.
Oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the bulk of the thick dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a softer, creamier texture to the finished dressing.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and egg yolk mixture together.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added a few drops at a time at first, while beating constantly. Adding it too fast before the yolks have absorbed it can break the emulsion, leaving a thin, separated dressing.

“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