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Mayonnaise Sauce or Salad Dressing

A simple mayonnaise-based sauce or salad dressing made from egg yolks, salt, cayenne pepper, dry mustard, oil or butter, and vinegar or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce or Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the yolks of the eggs in a bowl to a smooth paste.

  2. Add salt, cayenne pepper, dry mustard, and oil or melted butter, and mix well.

  3. When ready to serve, add vinegar or strained lemon juice to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 fat, holding oil droplets suspended to give a thick, creamy body.
Oil or melted butter
Supplies the fat that gives mayonnaise its richness, smooth texture and body.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion, so the oil stays dispersed in the yolk mixture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Mixing in the oil or melted butter. The yolk's emulsifiers can only hold fat droplets so well. Mixing thoroughly and not adding the fat too quickly lets each droplet be coated and dispersed, so the mixture thickens instead of separating into a greasy, runny layer.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, vinegar. 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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