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Salad

Cream Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard-boiled eggs, butter, mustard, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the hard-boiled eggs smoothly in a bowl.

  2. Add melted butter or salad oil, mixed mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, and thick sweet cream.

  3. Stir all ingredients together until well combined.

  4. Add vinegar gradually to achieve a creamy paste consistency.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over lettuce or any salad.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks and whites form the thick body of the dressing.
Melted butter or salad oil
Adds fat that makes the dressing smooth and rich.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the fat into the mixture.
Thick sweet cream
Adds moisture and creaminess to loosen the egg paste.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Add vinegar gradually to achieve a creamy paste consistency.. Vinegar thins and sharpens the mixture, so adding it slowly lets you stop once the dressing is creamy. Too much at once can make it watery and thin.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, cream, 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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