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Salad

Mayonnaise Foe Salads

A mayonnaise dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, onion, sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Foe Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Combine the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and the raw egg yolk, stirring until creamy.

  2. Add the mustard, grated onion, white pepper, sugar, lemon juice, and vinegar; mix until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the oil, one drop at a time, while stirring vigorously to combine.

Finish

  1. Optionally mix in capers and chopped parsley, or omit for sweetbread salad.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water into a thick, stable sauce.
Oil
Provides the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich body and texture.
Prepared mustard
Helps hold the oil and vinegar emulsion together and adds sharpness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must go in slowly so the yolks can emulsify it into fine droplets. Adding it too fast can break the mixture into a greasy, separated sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, onion, sugar, lemon, white wine, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, onion, sugar, lemon, white wine, 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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