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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, mustard, salt, red pepper, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

Finish the dressing

  1. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten eggs, mustard, salt, red pepper, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Return to heat and stir until the mixture thickens like custard.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth base when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy sauce with the flour.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to thicken the dressing into a custard-like texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Return to heat and stir until the mixture thickens like custard.. Egg proteins set when heated, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Gentle heat with constant stirring thickens the dressing smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, pepper, sugar, vinegar. 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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