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Oil Dressing

A dressing made with egg yolks, oil, mustard, lemon juice, salt, white pepper, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Oil Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Oil Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the raw yolk until light.

  2. Mash the cooked yolk and add it to the raw yolk.

  3. Gradually add the oil and a little lemon juice at a time while mixing.

  4. Season with salt, white pepper, and onion juice.

Finish and store

  1. Store in a cool place.

  2. Add whipped cream if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 lemon juice into a thick, smooth dressing.
Oil
Provides the fat that gives the dressing its richness and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich oil.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion so the oil stays suspended in the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly while mixing so the yolk can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, lemon, onion, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, lemon, onion, cream. 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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