Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette made with vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard, and egg, cooked until thickened and poured over sliced tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Tomato Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard, and beaten egg in a bowl.

  2. Cook the mixture over hot water until thickened.

Cool and serve

  1. Let it cool, then pour over sliced tomatoes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mustard + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens as its proteins set during cooking, giving the dressing body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, savoury flavour and helps keep the dressing smooth.

The step that matters

Cook gently over hot water. The beaten egg thickens as its proteins set, but too much heat makes it curdle into lumps. Keep the water hot rather than boiling so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

You might also like

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