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Mayonnaise

A homemade mayonnaise made with egg yolk, mustard powder, 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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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. Place the uncooked yolk of an egg into a cold bowl and beat with a fork.

  2. Add the salt and mustard powder, stirring to combine.

  3. Slowly add the oil and vinegar, a few drops at a time, alternating between them until the sauce resembles jelly.

  4. Continue alternating lemon juice with oil until you have used 1 cup of oil.

Finish

  1. Finish with a pinch of cayenne and 1½ teaspoons of vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Lecithin in the yolk emulsifies the oil, holding the droplets together so the sauce thickens.
Oil
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it richness and a thick, creamy texture.
Mustard powder
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at the start. Oil must be added a few drops at a time so the yolk can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and runny instead of thick.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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