Skip to main content
Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, sweet cream, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, and vinegar.

  2. Heat the mixture gently while stirring until it thickens, then remove from heat. Continue stirring until the mixture cools.

  3. Slowly add the remaining 4 tablespoons of olive oil, sweet cream, salt, mustard, and sugar, mixing well.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 cream, and thicken when gently heated to create a smooth dressing.
Olive oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing its rich body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances richness and helps the yolks thicken.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, softening the dressing's texture.

The step that matters

Heating the yolk mixture gently while stirring. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but too much heat or too fast scrambles them into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth and lets it thicken evenly before it cools.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, vinegar, cream, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, vinegar, cream, sugar. 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.

More mayonnaise dressing recipes

Cooked 4Aspic 3Potato 3 See all 251 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes