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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, olive oil, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the yolks of two hard boiled eggs and one raw egg thoroughly with the salt.

  2. Slowly beat in the olive oil, drop by drop, until well combined.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper, mustard, onion, tarragon vinegar, and cider vinegar.

  4. Alternate adding the vinegar with the oil to prevent the dressing from becoming too thin.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + cidertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water so the dressing becomes thick and smooth.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and richness of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich oil.

The step that matters

Alternate adding the vinegar with the oil. Oil added too quickly can break the emulsion, and the dressing loses its thickness. Adding vinegar between additions of oil helps keep the emulsion stable and the dressing from thinning out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, pepper, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, cider):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, pepper, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, cider. 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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