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Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, salad oil, vinegar, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Combine egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper in a bowl.

  2. Stir the dry ingredients thoroughly.

  3. Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop, then increase the speed as you continue to add the oil.

  4. Once most of the oil is incorporated, add the vinegar and lemon juice.

Finish with egg whites

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then mix them into the mayonnaise.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 into the base, giving the dressing its thick, creamy body.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that forms the body and richness of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they lighten the dressing and add airy volume.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at the start. Oil added too quickly to the yolks cannot be absorbed into the emulsion, so it can separate and the mayonnaise will break. Adding it drop by drop first lets the yolk lecithin coat the droplets before the flow increases.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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