Skip to main content
Main

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, flour, butter, and vinegar, sweetened with sugar and flavored with paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the egg yolks, dry mustard, salt, flour, paprika, sugar, and melted butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir in the hot water and hot vinegar until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture over the beaten yolks and mix well.

Finish

  1. Add sweet or sour cream to taste.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Thicken the dressing and help hold the oil and liquid together as an emulsion.
Flour
Starch thickens the dressing as the hot liquid is added and heated.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fat-based mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the hot water and hot vinegar. Adding the hot liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour and egg yolk from clumping. Starch swells and yolk proteins set as they heat, so even incorporation gives a smooth, evenly thickened dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, butter, vinegar, 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.

More mayonnaise dressing recipes

Cooked 4Aspic 3Potato 3 See all 251 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes