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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from raw egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, pepper juice, salt, and optional mustard, celery seed, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Place the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add the olive oil 1 teaspoon at a time, beating vigorously with an egg beater until very thick.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

  4. Add the pepper juice, salt, mustard, celery seed, and onion if desired.

Chill

  1. Chill the eggs and oil in the refrigerator for about 1 hour before using.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, letting the dressing thicken into a stable sauce.
Olive oil
Forms the droplets that give the dressing its thick body and rich, fatty mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Its compounds help stabilize the emulsion and add a sharp, savory note.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added very slowly while beating, so the egg yolk can surround each small droplet. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the emulsion breaks into a thin, greasy liquid.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, lemon, pepper, celery, onion):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, lemon, pepper, celery, onion. 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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