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Mayonnaise Salad Dressing

A cold, emulsified dressing made from egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, 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 Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add the vinegar and lemon juice alternately with the olive oil, starting with a few drops of the acid.

  3. Once the mixture begins to emulsify, you can use a whisk or electric mixer to beat it vigorously.

  4. Continue beating until the dressing is thick and creamy, ensuring the ingredients are cold to prevent curdling.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

  5. Olive + white winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their lecithin emulsifies the oil and water-based acid into a stable, thick dressing.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed into droplets, gives the dressing its body and richness.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps the emulsion set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and acid slowly at the start. Egg yolks can only hold a small amount of oil at first. Adding the oil and acid a few drops at a time lets the yolk emulsify them; adding too much early makes the mixture break and separate. Cold ingredients also help keep the emulsion from curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Apricotfits about as well

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