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Salad

Mayonnaise Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with egg yolk, mustard, lemon juice, oil, and seasonings.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolk, salt, pepper, cayenne, mustard, and lemon juice or vinegar to form a smooth paste.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil and vinegar (or lemon juice) a few drops at a time, stirring constantly until fully incorporated.

Fix and finish

  1. If the mixture curdles, stir in ½ teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice alone.

  2. If it still curdles, refrigerate for a while, then try mixing in another yolk and gradually incorporate the curdled sauce.

  3. For a white mayonnaise, use the egg white instead.

  4. Chill before serving.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and lemon juice or vinegar into a stable, thick sauce.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and body as it is dispersed into droplets.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Dry mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and liquid together and add a sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets around the egg yolk's emulsifiers. Adding it too fast overwhelms them, so the mixture separates or curdles.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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

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