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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with mustard, vinegar, egg yolks, butter or oil, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine dry mustard, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Beat in the yolks of 2 raw eggs.

  3. Slowly add butter or oil, a few drops at a time, while beating continuously.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Add vinegar or lemon juice, continuing to beat until thickened.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, binding them into a thick, smooth dressing.
Butter or oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed into droplets, gives the dressing its richness and body.
Egg whites
Add volume and lightness to the dressing once folded in.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness and helps thicken the emulsion.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly add butter or oil, a few drops at a time. Adding fat too quickly overwhelms the egg yolk's ability to hold it in droplets, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing separates into a greasy liquid. Beating continuously keeps the droplets small and the mixture thick.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, butter, pepper. 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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