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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, oil, salt, cayenne pepper, and vinegar or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil 3 eggs hard and let them cool.

  2. Remove the yolks and pass them through a sieve.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the sieved yolks with the 3 raw yolks, salt, and Cayenne pepper.

  2. Beat the mixture until very light.

  3. Slowly add the oil while occasionally adding a little vinegar or lemon juice 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks act as an emulsifier, holding the oil and acid together in a smooth, thick dressing.
Oil
Provides fat for richness and body, forming the bulk of the thick dressing.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Slowly add the oil. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets among the yolks to form a stable emulsion. Adding it too quickly overwhelms the yolks, so the dressing can split and become oily and loose.

“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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