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Salad Dressing Without Oil

A thick, oil-free dressing made from egg yolks, salt, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Salad Dressing Without Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine egg yolks, salt, mustard, and sugar in a double boiler and stir well.

  2. Add vinegar and cook until thick, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and beat with an egg beater until cool.

Store and serve

  1. Store in refrigerator; when ready to use, add cream to thin.

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

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken as they cook and bind the dressing into a smooth, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity and the liquid base of the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the yolk and vinegar mixture gently while stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they get too hot or are left unstirred they can curdle or scramble. Constant stirring over the double boiler keeps the heat even so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vinegar, cream. 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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