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Mayonnaise Dressing

A cold egg yolk-based dressing thickened with olive oil and seasoned with salt, cayenne, mustard, and lemon or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare

  1. Place the egg yolks in a cold bowl and beat with a fork for one minute.

  2. Add the salt, cayenne pepper, and mustard, and mix well.

Make the emulsion

  1. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring rapidly and steadily.

  2. After adding 1 cup of oil, alternate with a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar until the desired consistency is reached.

  3. If the dressing curdles, start over with new egg yolks and gradually add the curdled mixture while stirring.

  4. In warm weather, place the bowl on ice or in cold water to keep the ingredients cold.

Store

  1. Store the dressing in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

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

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

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Egg yolk lecithin emulsifies the oil and water so the dressing stays thick and smooth.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives the dressing its body and richness.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps the emulsion set to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be dispersed into the yolks in tiny droplets while stirring. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifier, so the mixture breaks and curdles.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, olive, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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