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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with mustard, egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, and optional sugar and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, mix mustard, salt, powdered sugar, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and egg yolks.

  2. Gradually add olive oil, starting with a few drops, then increasing to several teaspoons at a time.

  3. As the mixture thickens, add a little vinegar, ensuring it doesn't become sour.

  4. Toward the end, whip in lemon juice.

  5. Optionally, add whipped cream just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 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
Emulsifiers that hold the oil and vinegar together, giving the dressing its thick body.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in droplets, makes the dressing rich and creamy.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharpness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and egg yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and fresh flavour at the end of mixing.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil gradually. Oil must be added in very small amounts at first so the egg yolk can emulsify it. Adding too much oil too quickly can break the mixture, leaving it oily and separated instead of thick.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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