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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made by mixing dry ingredients with egg yolks, milk, and vinegar, cooked until thickened and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together, then add to the egg yolks and beat until well mixed.

  2. Gradually add the milk, then slowly add the vinegar to prevent curdling.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until thick.

  4. Add the butter and let cool.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set during cooking and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the dressing body as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar slowly. Adding hot vinegar to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them and make the dressing curdle. Adding the liquid gradually and stirring keeps the yolks smooth so the dressing thickens evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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