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Cooked Dressing

A cooked dressing made with eggs, cream, mustard, sugar, butter, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cooked Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a saucepan, mix the eggs, cream, mustard, sugar, butter, and salt.

  2. In a separate pan, bring the vinegar to a boil.

Cook the dressing

  1. Slowly add the boiling vinegar to the egg mixture while stirring.

  2. Cook the mixture over low heat until thickened.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 their proteins set when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that complements the vinegar.

The step that matters

Slowly add the boiling vinegar while stirring. Pouring the boiling vinegar in gradually while stirring warms the eggs slowly. Adding it quickly can scramble the eggs into lumps instead of letting the mixture thicken smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, 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.

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