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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, cream or oil, vinegar, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Pound the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs very smoothly.

  2. Mix in the mustard, sugar, and salt.

  3. Gradually add the cream or oil and vinegar, mixing well.

  4. Adjust salt and vinegar to taste.

Finish

  1. For added flavor, consider adding chili vinegar or shallot vinegar.

  2. Rub the salad bowl with a cut clove of garlic for a subtle flavor.

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. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the cream or oil, giving the dressing a thick, smooth body.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent bite.
Cream or pure oil
Supplies the fat that gives the dressing its richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream or oil and vinegar. Adding the liquid slowly while mixing lets the yolk coat fat droplets finely, forming a stable emulsion. Adding it all at once can cause the dressing to separate and turn thin and greasy.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Lettucefits less well

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