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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the base

  1. Pass the hard-boiled egg yolks through a sieve.

  2. Add salt, mustard, and cayenne pepper to the yolks.

  3. Cream the butter and mix in the raw egg yolks and the hard-boiled mixture.

  4. In three separate cups, have the oil, vinegar, and lemon juice ready.

Make the dressing

  1. Add 1 teaspoon of oil, then 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, followed by vinegar, and continue alternating until all ingredients are used.

  2. Beat the mixture with a Dover egg beater, stirring in one direction.

  3. Taste frequently to ensure it doesn't become too sour.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and butter into a thick, smooth dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the dressing.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, giving body and a silky texture.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and acid slowly while beating. Oil must be added gradually while beating so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the egg yolk lecithin. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, vinegar, 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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