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Mayonnaise Dressing

A cold egg yolk-based dressing made with olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt, cayenne, mustard, and sugar, and mix well.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring constantly in the same direction with a wooden spoon or silver fork.

  3. Once thick, gradually add the lemon juice and vinegar a few drops at a time.

  4. If the dressing curdles, take another egg yolk and mix in the curdled dressing, then add the remaining oil.

  5. Set the bowl on ice while making the dressing and chill the eggs and oil thoroughly before using.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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 and giving it body.
Olive oil
Forms the droplets suspended in the sauce, providing richness and the bulk of its thick texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the richness of the oil.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help stabilise the sauce and add a sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly, drop by drop. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets before it can be suspended in the yolk. Adding it too fast overwhelms the emulsifiers, so the sauce breaks and curdles.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, pepper, sugar, vinegar, 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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