Skip to main content
Salad

German Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette dressing made with bouillon, onion, celery, egg yolks, vinegar, olive oil, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

German Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine bouillon, onion, bay leaves, and chopped celery.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in arrowroot moistened in cold bouillon.

  3. Cook briefly, strain, and add to beaten egg yolks.

Finish the dressing

  1. Mix in vinegar, olive oil, salt, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Beat until light and set aside to cool completely.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Arrowroot + mustardtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing, giving it a rich, creamy body.
Arrowroot
Thickens the bouillon into a smooth base that sets as it cools.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, helping the dressing feel smooth and full.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.
Bouillon
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the other flavours.

The step that matters

Cook the arrowroot base briefly, then add it to the yolks. Arrowroot thickens when heated and loses its thickening power if overcooked or boiled too long. Egg yolks can scramble if added to a very hot liquid, so the base should be strained and cooled slightly before it is stirred into them.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, egg, vinegar, olive, mustard, pepper):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, egg, vinegar, olive, mustard, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes