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Salad

Ideal Salad Dressing

A creamy, tangy dressing made with egg, vinegar, flour, sugar, spices, butter, olives, peppers, onions, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ideal Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing base

  1. Beat the egg until light, then add the vinegar.

  2. Mix the flour, sugar, salt, mustard, and paprika together and add to the egg mixture.

  3. Place in a double boiler and cook until thick, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and add the butter, allowing it to cool completely.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, add the chopped green pepper, onion, pimento, and olives.

  2. Finally, add the cream and serve.

  3. For extra richness, you may add 2 tablespoons of oil.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and gives it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Stabilises the cooked mixture, giving it body so it stays thick.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sugar and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a richer mouthfeel.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard base in the double boiler. Egg proteins thicken gently as they heat, but too much heat or no constant stirring can scramble the egg and leave lumps. Gentle, steady heat keeps the base smooth before the butter and cream are added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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