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Mayonnaise Dressing

A cold dressing made with mustard, salt, sugar, cayenne, egg yolks, vinegar, lemon juice, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. In a bowl, mix the mustard, coarse sea salt, powdered sugar, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, alternating with the vinegar and lemon juice.

  3. Keep all ingredients cold and beat constantly while adding the olive oil gradually.

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

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

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 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
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and acid into a stable, thick sauce.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, providing richness and body as it is dispersed into droplets.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil gradually while beating constantly. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets within the yolk mixture. Adding it too fast, or with warm ingredients, overwhelms the yolks' emulsifiers and the sauce breaks into a greasy, separated liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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