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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made by heating vinegar, whisking eggs, sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, flour paste, butter, horseradish, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a double boiler, heat 1-2 pints of vinegar.

  2. Beat the eggs with the sugar, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stir in the flour mixed with enough water to make a paste.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the paste to the egg mixture and vinegar, then whip until light.

  2. Add the butter and stir for 10 minutes until thick and smooth.

  3. Once cooled, mix in horseradish to taste and fold in whipped cream.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 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. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Stabilizes the dressing by thickening it so it holds together without separating.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's tangy flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, silkier texture and a richer mouthfeel.
Whipped cream
Lightens the cooled dressing and adds creamy softness.

The step that matters

Add the butter and stir for 10 minutes until thick and smooth. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture must be cooked gently over a double boiler and stirred constantly. Too much heat can curdle the eggs and leave the dressing lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Horseradishthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

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