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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, egg yolk, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine dry mustard, powdered sugar, salt, red pepper, and beaten egg yolk. Mix well.

  2. Gradually add 2 to 3 teaspoons of olive oil while beating constantly.

  3. Alternately add 1 teaspoon each of lemon juice, olive oil, and vinegar until all ingredients are used.

  4. Ensure thorough beating and avoid adding too much oil at once.

Chill and serve

  1. Keep the dressing on ice.

  2. Before serving, fold in whipped cream.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and vinegar into a thick, stable dressing.
Olive oil
Forms the rich, fatty body of the dressing as it is beaten into the yolk.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the richness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the oil.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a softer, creamier texture when folded in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually while beating constantly. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets around the egg yolk's emulsifier. Adding too much at once overwhelms it, so the mixture breaks and separates instead of thickening.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, 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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