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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from mustard, flour, egg yolks, sweet milk, butter, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix mustard, flour, egg yolks, salt, sugar, and sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick enough to drop from a knife.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat, let cool slightly, then stir in butter, vinegar, and pepper 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness as they set during cooking.
Flour
Helps thicken the cooked mixture so it holds its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid base that cooks into the thickened custard.

The step that matters

Cook until thick, stirring constantly. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred over medium heat. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly, so the mixture thickens smoothly instead of turning grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, flour, egg, sugar, milk, 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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