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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with salt, mustard, paprika, flour, butter, milk, vinegar, egg, cottage cheese, and sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together and cream them with the melted butter.

  2. Add the creamed mixture to the heated milk and stir until very thick.

Finish and cool

  1. After the mixture has boiled, add vinegar slowly while stirring.

  2. Cool slightly before serving.

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

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

  4. Butter + cottage cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  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

Flour
Thickens the mixture as it cooks with the milk, giving the dressing body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps blend the dry ingredients into a smooth paste.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Soft cottage cheese
Contributes soft, creamy body and a mild tang to the dressing.
Sour cream
Adds creamy richness and a tangy flavor, lightened by whipping.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar. Acid added to hot, thickened milk can make its proteins clump and curdle. Adding the vinegar slowly while stirring spreads the acid evenly so the dressing stays smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, vinegar, egg, cottage cheese, 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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