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Salad

Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with oil, vinegar, horseradish, mustard, and a hard‑boiled egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine oil, vinegar, salt, horseradish, mustard, black pepper, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, grated onion, garlic, and lemon juice.

  2. Beat the mixture with an egg beater until it thickens.

  3. Fold in the chopped yolk of the hard-boiled egg.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Forms the base of the dressing and carries the flavours, giving body and richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and body, helping the dressing thicken and feel creamy.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar so they stay blended.

The step that matters

Beat until it thickens. Beating whisks oil into the vinegar and other liquids as tiny droplets, forming an emulsion. Stopping too early leaves the dressing thin and likely to separate.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, horseradish, mustard, pepper, sauce, onion, garlic):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, horseradish, mustard, pepper, sauce, onion, garlic. 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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