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Mayonnaise Dressing

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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. In a bowl, combine egg yolks, salt, and mustard.

  2. Stir with a fork and slowly add olive oil until the mixture thickens.

  3. Add lemon juice and vinegar, stirring constantly until well mixed.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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 mixture and give the dressing its body and richness.
Olive oil
Forms the fat base that gives the dressing its thick, creamy texture when emulsified.
Mustard
Helps hold the emulsion together and adds sharpness to the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil slowly. Oil must be added gradually while stirring so the yolk can emulsify it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can break the mixture so it stays oily and fails to thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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