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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, lemon juice, vinegar, oil, and optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne, and salt until very light and thick.

  2. Set the bowl in a pan of ice water while beating.

  3. Slowly add a few drops of oil at a time until the mixture becomes very thick.

  4. Once thick, add the oil more rapidly.

  5. If the mixture becomes too thick for the beater, add a little vinegar.

  6. After adding all the oil and vinegar, the mixture should be very thick.

Finish and chill

  1. Stir in the lemon juice and whipped cream, then refrigerate for a few hours before using.

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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
Their lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the dressing together and giving it body.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing, creating a rich, thick texture when emulsified into the yolks.
Mustard
Acts as a secondary emulsifier that helps keep the oil and yolk mixture stable.
Vinegar
Thins the mixture when it gets too stiff and adds sharp acidity to balance the richness.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a softer, creamier mouthfeel to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at the start. Egg yolks can only hold a limited amount of oil at first. Adding oil in drops while beating lets the emulsion form; adding it too fast causes it to break and turn runny and greasy.

“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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