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Salad

A New Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made by simmering vinegar, butter, mustard, and spices, then whisking in eggs and sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

A New Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat vinegar, sugar, butter, salt, mustard, pepper, and celery salt together in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs until light and mix in the sour cream.

  3. Pour the egg and cream mixture into the hot vinegar mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Cook slowly in a double boiler until the dressing thickens.

Store

  1. Store covered; it will keep indefinitely.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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 with gentle heat, giving it body.
Sour cream
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's tang.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot vinegar. Stirring constantly while pouring spreads the egg proteins out before they can set. Dumping them in at once can scramble the eggs into lumps, so the dressing will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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