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Salad

Velvet Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, vinegar, water, sugar, mustard, salt, flour, butter, and optional marshmallows.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Velvet Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Add the vinegar and water to the egg yolks.

  3. Mix the sugar, mustard, salt, and flour together, then add to the egg mixture.

  4. Place the mixture in a round-bottomed bowl set in another pan of water to avoid direct heat.

  5. Whip the mixture vigorously until it thickens using a wire egg beater.

  6. Add the butter after removing from heat.

Finish and cool

  1. Allow the mixture to cool thoroughly before adding the marshmallows.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter 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 cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Flour
Stabilises the custard-like mixture so it holds its thickness.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, softer mouthfeel.
Marshmallows
Add sweetness and a soft, light texture when folded in.

The step that matters

Whip until thickened over indirect heat. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if they get too hot they scramble and curdle. Gentle indirect heat in a water bath, with constant whisking, lets them set into a smooth dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

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