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Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice or vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill all utensils and ingredients.

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, mix the salt, mustard, pepper, and egg yolks until smooth.

  2. Add a few drops of vinegar and stir steadily.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil drop by drop as the mixture thickens.

  4. If it becomes too thick, add a few drops of lemon juice to thin it out.

  5. Continue stirring and adding oil and lemon juice until all ingredients are used.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together.
Olive oil
Forms the fat base that gives mayonnaise its rich body and texture.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that balances richness and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Mustard
Its compounds help stabilise the emulsion and add a sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added drop by drop at first so the yolk can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, and the sauce separates into oily liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, olive, lemon. 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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