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Salad

Cooked Salad Dressing

A thickened salad dressing made with eggs, sugar, butter, corn starch, mustard, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Cooked Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix the corn starch and mustard with the sugar, then add to the eggs.

  3. Add the butter, salt, and pepper, and stir well.

Cook and finish

  1. Pour in the vinegar and cook over low heat until it thickens.

  2. Let the dressing cool before using.

  3. Thin with whipped cream if 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + mustardtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a creamy emulsion.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the dressing body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until it thickens. Egg proteins and starch thicken as they heat, but high heat can scramble the eggs and leave lumps. Gentle heat with steady stirring keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

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