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Chicken Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, sugar, butter, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Chicken Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Beat the yolks of three eggs well.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of mustard, 1 teaspoon of salt, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and 2 teaspoons of sugar.

Cook the dressing

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of hot vinegar and cook while stirring constantly.

  3. Once cooked, stir in 1 cup of 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.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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. 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and help bind it together.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, full body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with a touch of sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps hold the emulsion together.

The step that matters

Cook the vinegar mixture while stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture gets too hot or sits still, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  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, butter, vinegar, 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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