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Salad

Fruit Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with eggs, lemon juice, sugar, whipped cream, and optional olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until very stiff.

  2. Add the lemon juice and sugar to taste.

  3. Add a pinch of salt.

Finish the dressing

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Fold in the whipped cream.

  3. Mix all together until very stiff.

  4. Chill on ice until ready to serve.

  5. If using olive oil, add it slowly to the beaten yolks before mixing in the other ingredients.

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. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Yolks emulsify and thicken the dressing, while beaten whites add airy structure.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving a light, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the lemon.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, and helps form a smooth emulsion with the yolks.

The step that matters

Add the olive oil slowly to the yolks. Oil must be added gradually so it disperses into the yolks as a stable emulsion. Adding it too fast can cause the mixture to separate and turn greasy and thin.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, olive, 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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