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Salad

Salad Dressing Without Oil

A creamy, oil-free dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, milk or whipped cream, vinegar, and optional garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Salad Dressing Without Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a basin, beat the yolks of the hard boiled eggs with a round enamel soup ladle or pestle and mortar.

  2. Add the mustard, caster sugar, coarse sea salt, and black pepper, mixing well.

  3. Slowly incorporate the whipped cream or undiluted milk while beating until smooth.

  4. Carefully add the vinegar and mix until fully combined.

  5. For fish, add the ground clove of garlic for extra flavor.

Serve

  1. Use the egg whites for salad.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the other liquids, giving the dressing its smooth, thick body.
Whipped cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, softening the dressing's texture.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the mixture together and add sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity, giving the dressing its tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Slowly incorporate the whipped cream or undiluted milk while beating until smooth.. Adding the liquid slowly while beating lets the yolk and mustard emulsify it gradually. Adding it all at once can cause the dressing to separate and stay runny or grainy.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, sugar, pepper, cream, vinegar, garlic):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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