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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, pepper, paprika, and optional Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 emulsion

  1. Beat the egg yolks until thick.

  2. Mix the lemon juice and vinegar, then add gradually to the egg yolks.

  3. Add pepper and part of the salt.

  4. Using a Dover beater, beat in the oil a few drops at a time, thoroughly mixing between each addition.

Finish and store

  1. Once all the oil is incorporated, add the remaining salt and beat again.

  2. Store in a covered earthen dish in a cool place.

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  4. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together.
Olive or vegetable oil
Supplies the fat that forms the body and rich texture of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added a few drops at a time while beating. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce separates into oily liquid instead of thickening.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, egg, vinegar, sauce. 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 recipes

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