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Mayonnaise Dressing

A cold dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, salt, cayenne, olive oil, and lemon juice 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

Make the emulsion

  1. Beat the egg yolks well in a bowl.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper, and stir to combine.

  3. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while stirring rapidly.

Adjust and store

  1. Thin the mixture with a little lemon juice or vinegar as needed.

  2. If the oil curdles, start again with a new egg yolk and gradually stir in the curdled dressing.

  3. For flavor, add onion juice, tarragon vinegar, or a few drops of Tabasco.

  4. Mix in whipped cream if desired.

  5. Ensure all ingredients are cold and store the dressing in a cool place.

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. Mustard + peppertop 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, forming a thick, stable dressing.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed into droplets, gives the dressing its body and richness.
Ground mustard
Mustard compounds help stabilise the emulsion and add a sharp flavour.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and thins the dressing as needed.

The step that matters

Slowly drizzling in the olive oil. Oil added too fast cannot be absorbed by the egg yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing curdles. Adding oil gradually while stirring lets the yolk coat each droplet and hold the mixture together.

Swap the mustard

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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