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Mayonnaise

A thick, creamy sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, oil, lemon juice or vinegar, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and dry mustard.

  2. Slowly stir in the olive oil drop by drop to start thickening.

  3. Once a little oil is incorporated, add the salt.

  4. Continue adding oil and alternating with lemon juice or vinegar until the mixture is thick enough.

Finish

  1. Finish with powdered sugar and cayenne pepper 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Mustard + olivetop 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

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it its thick, rich body as it is dispersed into droplets.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Dry mustard
Contains natural emulsifiers that help stabilise the oil and yolk mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at the start. Oil must be added drop by drop so it breaks into tiny droplets that the yolk can coat. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the sauce may split and fail to thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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