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Cooked Cream Salad Dressing

A cooked dressing made with flour, sugar, mustard, eggs, vinegar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cooked Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix flour, salt, sugar, mustard, and pepper together.

  2. Add olive oil and mix until smooth.

  3. Add eggs and beat with a wire beater for 2 minutes.

  4. Stir in vinegar and then add the milk.

  5. Cook in a double boiler until thick, stirring constantly.

  6. Thin with more vinegar or cream if desired.

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. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set during cooking, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, stable sauce as it cooks.
Olive oil
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and richer texture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thick, stirring constantly. Eggs can curdle if overheated. Gentle, constant stirring over indirect heat lets the egg proteins and flour thicken the dressing evenly without lumps or scrambling.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, mustard, olive, egg, vinegar, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, mustard, olive, egg, vinegar, milk. 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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