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Sour Cream Dressing

A simple dressing made with sour cream, salt, vinegar, white pepper, sugar, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sour Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the sour cream and then the vinegar.

Serve

  1. Use immediately.

  2. This dressing is especially good on finely sliced cabbage.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Gives the dressing its thick, creamy body and tangy flavor.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that cuts through the richness of the sour cream.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vinegar, sugar. 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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