Skip to main content
Dessert

A Simple Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolk, mustard, spices, lemon, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A Simple Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolk, dry mustard, white pepper, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Mix with a wooden spoon until creamy and white.

Emulsify and finish

  1. Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring constantly.

  2. If the mixture thickens too quickly, add a little juice from the other half of the lemon.

  3. Gradually stir in the strong vinegar.

  4. Keep cool until ready to use.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and vinegar, holding the dressing together as a thick sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives the dressing its rich body and smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Strong vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the oil.
Dry mustard
Contains natural emulsifiers that help the oil and water-based liquids stay combined.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil must be added slowly while stirring so each droplet is fully dispersed before more is added. Adding it too fast overwhelms the egg yolk's emulsifiers, causing the mixture to break and separate.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

More mayonnaise dressing recipes

Cooked 4Aspic 3Potato 3 See all 251 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes