Skip to main content
Salad

Mayonnaise Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made with mustard, powdered sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, raw egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Mayonnaise Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

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

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil a few drops at a time until the mixture is stiff and stringy.

  4. Then, add 1 teaspoon of raw egg and the remaining oil alternately with the vinegar and lemon juice, finishing with the lemon juice.

Adjust the texture

  1. For a thinner dressing, you may add the white of 1 egg.

  2. To achieve a whiter dressing, dilute with whipped cream.

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
Emulsifier that binds the oil and vinegar into a stable, thick dressing.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing its body.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and vinegar emulsion together and adds sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at first. Oil must be added a few drops at a time so the emulsion forms. Adding it too fast breaks the mixture, which stays runny and separated instead of becoming stiff.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes