Skip to main content
Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with egg yolks, lemon juice, oil, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and olive 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 mayonnaise

  1. Beat the egg yolks thoroughly.

  2. Gradually add the oil while stirring constantly.

  3. As the mixture thickens, thin it with lemon juice.

  4. Continue adding oil and lemon juice alternately until all is used, beating constantly.

  5. Use a chilled oil for best results.

  6. To add oil slowly, pour it into a bottle with a V cut in the cork.

Fix and store

  1. If the dressing curdles, restore smoothness by gradually adding the curdled mixture to another beaten egg yolk.

  2. Store in a jar with a tight lid in the refrigerator for indefinite keeping.

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. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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
Emulsifier that holds the oil and lemon juice together as a smooth, thick sauce.
Olive oil or refined cottonseed oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and body as it is dispersed into droplets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps thin the emulsion as it thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while beating constantly. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets around the egg yolk proteins. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing curdles.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Pumpkinfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive. 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

Dressing 251Sauce 29Chicken Salad 16Lobster 12Salmon 12Salmon Salad 11 See all 305 →

You might also like

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