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Egg Salad with Mayonnaise

A salad of sliced boiled potatoes and eggs mixed with a mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By T. R. Allinson · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 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 ↓

Egg Salad with Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables and eggs

  1. Boil 1 lb. of potatoes until cooked, then cool.

  2. Hard-boil 6 eggs.

  3. Cut the potatoes and eggs into slices.

  4. Dust the slices with pepper and salt to taste.

  5. Add the juice of ½ a lemon and mix well.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs in a clean cold basin.

  2. Add 1-½ gills of good salad oil dropwise to the yolks, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.

  3. When the mayonnaise thickens, add a little lemon juice to thin it, then alternate adding oil and lemon juice until all oil is incorporated.

  4. Blend 1 saltspoonful of mustard with a little lemon juice, then stir into the mayonnaise with pepper and salt.

  5. Taste the mayonnaise and adjust lemon juice or seasoning as required.

  6. Use vinegar instead of lemon juice if necessary.

  7. Make the mayonnaise in a cold room to prevent curdling.

  8. If the mayonnaise curdles, beat another yolk, start fresh with a little oil, then slowly incorporate the curdled mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine part of the mayonnaise with the sliced eggs and potatoes, pour the remaining mayonnaise over the salad, and garnish with watercress.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

218Calories
7 gProtein
19 gFat
6 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Mustard1 tsp (5g) yellow3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Saladnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By T. R. Allinson. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Mustard + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks emulsify with oil to form the mayonnaise and add richness to the salad.
Salad oil
Forms the body of the mayonnaise, giving it a thick, creamy texture when emulsified.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mayonnaise and helps keep it thin enough to emulsify.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the mayonnaise holds together.
Potatoes (in the method)
Form the bulk of the salad, absorbing some of the dressing and adding body.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the yolks. Oil must be added slowly, drop by drop at first, while stirring constantly, so it emulsifies into the yolks. Adding it too fast causes the mayonnaise to break and curdle.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, 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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