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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from eggs, butter, flour, vinegar, sugar, salt, paprika, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of three eggs until thick and creamy.

  2. Add salt, sugar, paprika, mustard, butter, flour, and vinegar.

  3. If the vinegar is too strong, dilute it.

  4. For a variation, mix with 1 tablespoon of whipped cream for every 2 tablespoons of dressing.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the dressing and help hold its liquid and fat together smoothly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity for a sharp, tangy flavour and helps balance the richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Its starch thickens the mixture slightly, giving it more body.

The step that matters

Beat the yolks until thick and creamy. Well-beaten yolks trap air and build body before the other ingredients are added. If they are under-beaten, the base stays thin and the finished dressing will be loose.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, 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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