Skip to main content
Main

Salad Dressing

An egg-based salad dressing with brown sugar, salad oil, vinegar, Harvey's sauce, cream, mustard, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salad Dressing

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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

Make the dressing

  1. Hard boil the eggs and pound them well in a mortar.

  2. In a basin, combine the pounded eggs with mustard, pepper, salt, and brown sugar; mix well.

  3. Gradually add the salad oil, followed by the vinegar and Harvey's sauce, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Finally, stir in the cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Pounded yolks and whites form the thick, creamy body of the dressing.
Salad oil
Emulsifies into the egg base to give the dressing richness and a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, mellowing the sharpness of the vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp and savoury notes.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly to the pounded egg so it emulsifies into a smooth, stable dressing; adding it all at once can cause it to separate and look greasy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

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

More salad dressing recipes

Boiled 72Cream 68French 58Cooked 45Fruit 41Chicken 31 See all 528 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes