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Salad

White Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with cream, flour, vinegar, butter, egg whites, sugar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

White Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the cream until hot.

  2. Blend the flour with the vinegar and add to the cream.

  3. Stir in the butter.

Combine and season

  1. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg whites.

  2. Stir well and season with sugar and mustard to taste.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cream
Provides the rich, liquid base that gives the dressing its body.
Flour
Starch thickens the cream as it heats, giving the dressing body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add lightness and body to the dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the beaten egg whites. The hot mixture can partly cook the egg whites and deflate their foam. Pouring slowly while stirring gently keeps the dressing light and evenly smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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