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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A boiled dressing made with eggs, butter, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the dry ingredients (salt, mustard, cayenne, and sugar) together in a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs and butter.

  3. Add the dry mixture to the egg mixture and stir well.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the mixture in a double boiler and cook for 8 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and beat with an egg beater until smooth.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, thickening the dressing into a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a softer, smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the mustard and cayenne.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and some emulsifying help that supports a smooth dressing.

The step that matters

Cooking in the double boiler. Eggs thicken gently at moderate heat. Too much heat scrambles the proteins into lumps, so the gentle, indirect heat of a double boiler keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, sugar, 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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