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Mayonnaise Dressing

A dressing made by emulsifying butter, flour, mustard, salt, eggs, and vinegar, finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the vinegar to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Beat together the butter, flour, mustard, salt, and eggs in a bowl.

  3. Slowly pour the beaten mixture into the boiling vinegar, stirring constantly. Continue stirring until the mixture boils.

  4. Add enough whipped cream to achieve a pourable consistency when ready to use.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Thicken the mixture as they set with heat, giving the dressing body.
Flour
Stabilizes the mixture and adds thickness so the dressing holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Whipped cream
Lightens the thickened base and loosens it to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Pouring the beaten mixture into the boiling vinegar. Pour slowly while stirring constantly. Adding the egg mixture too fast or without stirring can cause the eggs to scramble into lumps instead of thickening the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, vinegar, egg, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, egg, cream. 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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