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Mayonnaise Dbessing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, oil, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dbessing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of two raw eggs with salt until smooth.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of thick mustard.

  3. Gradually pour in ¾ cup of salad oil while stirring continuously.

  4. Add ⅓ cup of tarragon vinegar and stir until the mixture is creamy.

Store

  1. Store in a corked bottle.

  2. For better preservation, stir in 1 tablespoon of boiling water drop by drop before bottling.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + tarragontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 vinegar into a stable, thick dressing.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives the dressing its rich, creamy body.
Thick mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharpness that balances the oil.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and flavour, and helps set the emulsified texture.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the salad oil while stirring continuously. Adding oil too fast before the yolks have emulsified can cause the mixture to split and separate. Slow addition lets small oil droplets disperse evenly and stay suspended in the yolk mixture.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tarragon, 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.

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