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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made by boiling butter, flour, and seasonings, then whisking in egg yolks, vinegar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, mustard, sugar, and cayenne.

  2. Add the dry mixture to the slightly beaten egg yolks.

Cook and finish

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour mixture until it bubbles.

  2. Stir in the diluted vinegar and then add the egg mixture.

  3. Remove from heat and beat in whipped cream until desired consistency is reached.

  4. Slowly add the lemon juice last.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they gently set with heat and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter base so the dressing holds body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked base.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon with sweetness.
Diluted vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's tang.
Lemon juice
Adds bright, fresh acidity when it is stirred in last.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot vinegar base. Egg yolks thicken gently when heated, but too much heat too fast makes them scramble and curdle. Stirring steadily while adding the eggs keeps the dressing smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Arrowrootfits about as well

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