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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with butter, flour, vinegar, egg yolks, mustard, cream, cayenne pepper, and sugar.

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

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the melted butter with the flour.

  3. Add the vinegar and bring to a boil.

  4. Pour the hot mixture over the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Stir in the salt, ground mustard, cream, cayenne pepper, and sugar.

  6. Return to the stove and stir until it boils.

  7. Thin the dressing with additional cream as desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and give it a rich, emulsified body as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and stabilize it against separating.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's tang.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Adding the hot mixture gradually while beating the yolks helps them warm evenly, so the dressing thickens smoothly instead of turning lumpy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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