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Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

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

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. Stir the egg yolks in a small bowl with a silver or wooden spoon until smooth.

  2. Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

  3. Once the mixture begins to thicken, alternate adding a few drops of vinegar and lemon juice.

  4. If the sauce curdles, beat another egg yolk and gradually mix in the curdled mayonnaise.

  5. Finally, add the mustard, powdered sugar, cayenne, and salt.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 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 yolks
Emulsify the oil and water into a thick, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and fresh flavour that balances the rich oil.
Mustard
Acts as an extra emulsifier and adds sharpness.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil added too fast cannot be absorbed by the egg yolk emulsion, so it separates and the sauce curdles. Adding it drop by drop while whisking lets each droplet be surrounded and dispersed before more is added.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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