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Dessert

Cooked Salad Dressing with Cottage Cheese

A creamy salad dressing made with mustard, flour, sugar, milk, vinegar, eggs, butter, and cottage cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cooked Salad Dressing with Cottage Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing base

  1. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients: mustard, salt, flour, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the slightly beaten egg yolks and melted butter.

  3. Stir in the cold milk and hot vinegar until smooth.

  4. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thickened.

Add the cottage cheese

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the stiffly beaten egg whites with the cottage cheese that has been neutralized with baking soda.

  2. Fold the cottage cheese mixture into the cooked dressing.

  3. Set the pan in a bowl of cold water.

  4. Beat well until cool and 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.

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

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

  3. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the dressing as they cook, and whipped whites lighten the cottage cheese mixture.
Cottage cheese
Adds body and creaminess to the dressing once folded in.
Flour
Thickens the dressing and helps keep it smooth while cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Baking soda
Neutralizes the acidity of the cottage cheese so it blends smoothly.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing in a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat thickens the egg yolk mixture gradually. Overheating can scramble the eggs and leave lumps, so the mixture should be stirred and cooked only until thickened.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, pepper, cottage cheese, 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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