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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with sour cream, sugar, mustard, vinegar, eggs, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine sour cream, sugar, mustard, and vinegar.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light and stir them into the cream mixture.

  3. Cook the mixture on the stove until it thickens to the consistency of cold honey.

  4. While still on the stove, add the walnut-sized butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and give it a rich, creamy body.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and a tangy, creamy base for the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook until it thickens to the consistency of cold honey. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Undercooked, the dressing stays thin; overheated, the eggs can scramble and curdle, so heat must be kept moderate and the mixture stirred.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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