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Mayonnaise Dressing

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

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

Make the base

  1. Beat the yolk of one egg in a small bowl.

  2. Slowly add 1 pint of cold olive oil while stirring or beating gently for about 1 hour.

Season and emulsify

  1. In a separate bowl, mix ½ teaspoon mustard, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon powdered sugar, and a few grains of cayenne.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon each of lemon juice and vinegar to the dry ingredients and blend thoroughly.

  3. Combine the seasoning mixture with the beaten egg yolk and beat until slightly thickened.

  4. Add the olive oil a few drops at a time while continuing to beat.

  5. Once it begins to thicken, add the oil in larger quantities until the dressing is sufficiently heavy.

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. 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
Lecithin in the yolk emulsifies the oil and water, holding the dressing together.
Olive oil
Forms the droplets that give the dressing its rich body and fat-based texture.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the oil and lemon juice stay blended.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at the start. Oil must be added a few drops at a time while beating, so each droplet is coated by yolk before more oil enters. Adding too much early breaks the emulsion and the dressing separates.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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