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Mayonnaise Dressing

A cold dressing made with mustard, salt, sugar, cayenne, egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, optionally cream or beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, salt, powdered sugar, and cayenne.

  2. Add the egg yolks and stir until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while beating constantly.

  4. Gradually add the lemon juice, alternating with the remaining olive oil.

  5. If the mixture curdles, slowly add it to a new egg yolk to restore consistency.

  6. The dressing should be smooth, glossy, and hold its shape.

Finish and serve

  1. Thin with cream or beaten egg white before serving.

  2. Keep all ingredients cold and serve immediately.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Emulsifiers that bind the oil and lemon juice into a stable, thick dressing.
Olive oil
Provides fat that, emulsified into the yolks, gives the dressing its body and richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps the emulsion set.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the oil stays dispersed in the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must go in very slowly while beating, because the yolks can only suspend small droplets at first. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion and the mixture curdles.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, olive, lemon, 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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