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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolk, mustard, oil, lemon juice or vinegar, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Chill the egg yolk and oil in the refrigerator until cold.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with a fork.

  2. Slowly add the oil drop by drop while continuously beating.

  3. If the mixture becomes too thick, add up to 2 teaspoons of lemon juice or vinegar.

  4. Do not add salt until the mayonnaise is finished to prevent separation.

  5. If the mayonnaise separates, beat it with a Dover egg beater.

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. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil into the water-based mixture, forming a thick, stable sauce.
Oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives mayonnaise its rich body.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and water emulsion together, adding stability and flavour.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and can loosen a mixture that has become too thick.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop while beating. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets in the yolk before more is added. Adding it too fast overwhelms the emulsifier, so the mixture breaks and separates instead of thickening.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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