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Mayonnaise Dressing

A cold dressing made by emulsifying egg yolk, oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, paprika, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Chill the yolk and oil.

  2. Drop the oil into the yolk one drop at a time while stirring continuously.

  3. Once the mixture thickens, add the vinegar and lemon juice mixed together a little at a time, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the remaining ingredients.

  5. If the mayonnaise is too thick, thin it with whipped cream or beaten egg whites.

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

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Yolk of eggs
Emulsifies the oil into the mixture, giving the dressing its body and richness.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, giving the dressing its rich, smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor to balance the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil one drop at a time. Egg yolk lecithin can only hold oil droplets in suspension if the oil is added slowly at first. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, so the mixture separates and won't thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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