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Oil Mayonnaise II

A simple mayonnaise made with olive oil, egg yolk, lemon juice, salt, mustard, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Oil Mayonnaise II

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place a bowl in a pan of ice water.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Put the egg yolk, salt, mustard, red pepper, and strained lemon juice in the bowl and beat together using a whisk.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil while beating rapidly.

  3. Continue until the mayonnaise is stiff, about ten minutes.

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. Lemon + peppertop 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. Olive + mustardtop 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. Lemon + mustardtop 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 yolk
Lecithin in the yolk surrounds oil droplets, letting the oil and lemon juice stay blended as one emulsion.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it its rich, thick body once emulsified.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the richness of the oil and yolk.
Mustard
Contains natural emulsifiers that help hold the oil and water-based ingredients together.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil slowly while beating. The oil must be broken into very fine droplets that the yolk can coat. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the oil separates instead of thickening the sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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