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Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise made with egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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

Prepare the yolks

  1. Separate the egg yolks carefully and place them in a mixing bowl.

  2. Beat the yolks with a mayonnaise mixer on ice until slightly beaten.

Make the emulsion

  1. Add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring steadily until one dropperful has been used.

  2. Add more oil gradually, alternating with the lemon juice, until all ingredients are well blended.

  3. Season to taste.

Store

  1. Pour the mixture into a pint jar.

  2. Screw on the cover tightly.

  3. Refrigerate.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together and making it thick.
Olive oil
Forms the fat droplets that give mayonnaise its rich, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop at the start. Oil added too quickly before the yolks have formed an emulsion can overwhelm them and cause the sauce to split and separate. Starting slowly lets tiny oil droplets get coated and dispersed, so the emulsion forms and holds.

“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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