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Salad

Salad-dressing

A creamy dressing made from hard‑boiled eggs, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Salad-dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until very hard and let them cool completely.

  2. Remove the egg whites.

  3. Mash the yolks into a paste.

Make the dressing

  1. Mix in the powdered sugar, French mustard, and salt.

  2. Slowly add olive oil until the mixture reaches a thick cream consistency.

  3. Stir in the vinegar.

  4. Chop the egg whites and add them to the mixture.

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. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Mashed into a paste, they emulsify with the oil and give the dressing its thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness; added slowly, it forms a stable emulsion that thickens the dressing.
French mustard
Contains emulsifying compounds that help hold the oil and yolk mixture together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Powdered sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that rounds out the acidity and mustard.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil slowly. Oil added too fast cannot be absorbed by the egg yolk paste and the emulsion breaks, leaving a greasy, runny dressing instead of a thick cream.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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