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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill utensils and ingredients thoroughly.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until creamy.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and dry lemon juice; beat again.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil while continuing to beat until thickened.

  4. If the mixture becomes too thick, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar.

  5. Continue adding oil and alternating with lemon juice or vinegar until fully combined.

Finish

  1. For improved flavor, fold in 1 cup of whipped cream just before serving.

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

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

  2. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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
Emulsify the oil and water so the sauce thickens and holds together.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and richness of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Whipped cream (in the method)
Adds lightness and a softer, creamier texture to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while beating. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets among the egg yolk proteins to form an emulsion. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, so the mixture breaks and fails to thicken.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, olive, 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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