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Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from sweet cream, egg yolks, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the sweet cream in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Whisk in the egg yolks and cook until the mixture thickens.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, sugar, salt, and mustard.

Serve

  1. Serve as a dressing for fruit salads.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Their proteins set as they heat, thickening the dressing into a smooth, creamy texture.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing body and a mellow mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness and sweetness.

The step that matters

Whisking the yolks into the hot cream. Egg yolk proteins set when heated. Whisking constantly and cooking gently thickens the mixture smoothly, while too much heat can curdle or scramble it.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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