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Mayonnaise Dressing

A simple homemade mayonnaise dressing made with egg yolk, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a soup plate, beat the egg yolk with a silver fork.

  2. Slowly add the oil while continuing to beat.

  3. Add a few drops of vinegar as the dressing thickens.

  4. Continue adding vinegar until the dressing reaches the desired consistency.

Store

  1. Store in the refrigerator for several days.

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. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and water so the dressing stays smooth and thick.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing, providing richness and body as droplets disperse in the yolk.
Vinegar
Adds acidity for flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion as it thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while beating. Oil must be dispersed in tiny droplets before more is added. Pouring too fast overwhelms the yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing stays runny or separates.

“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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