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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with mustard, egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, and optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a small bowl, mix the mustard, powdered sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the egg yolks and stir well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil, a few drops at a time, stirring until the mixture thickens.

  4. Once thick, thin the dressing with a little lemon juice, then alternate adding oil and lemon juice, finishing with the vinegar.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, fold in the whipped cream before serving.

  2. Mix half of the dressing with the salad and spread the remainder on top.

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 bind the oil and lemon juice into a thick, stable dressing.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing its body and richness.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and water phases together, supporting a stable emulsion.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and thins the finished dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added a few drops at a time while stirring so it disperses into the egg yolk as tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving a thin, separated dressing that will not thicken.

Swap the lemon

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