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Mayonnaise Dressing

A dressing made from raw and boiled egg yolks, olive oil, mustard, lemon juice, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Strain the raw and boiled egg yolks through a fine strainer and beat them until very light.

  2. Slowly pour in the olive oil while continuously beating the mixture.

  3. Add the mustard, salt, red pepper, and lemon juice, mixing well.

  4. Store in the refrigerator; it will keep for months.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water in the dressing, giving it a thick, creamy structure.
Boiled egg yolks
Add body and smoothness to the emulsion while contributing richness.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that forms the body and richness of the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps balance the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Pouring in the olive oil slowly while beating. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets in the yolks to form a stable emulsion. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, so the mixture breaks and separates instead of thickening.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, pepper, 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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