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Salad

Salad Cream

A creamy dressing made with mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Salad Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the mustard, salt, and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Stir in the cream.

  3. Add the vinegar drop by drop, mixing well.

Serve

  1. Use as required.

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

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Gives the dressing richness and a thick, smooth body.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps the mixture stay smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness that balances the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar drop by drop, mixing well. Acid can cause cream to thicken unevenly or curdle if it is added quickly. Adding it slowly while mixing lets it disperse evenly and keeps the dressing smooth.

“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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