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Sauce

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice or vinegar, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the egg yolks, olive oil, and the plate you'll use.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with white pepper and salt.

  3. Add the mustard and mix thoroughly.

Emulsify

  1. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring in the same direction.

  2. If the mixture begins to crack, add vinegar while stirring.

  3. If it curdles, continue adding oil to maintain a creamy consistency.

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 + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  2. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 yolk emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together as a stable mixture.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness, body and its characteristic fat-based texture.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion when it begins to break.
Prepared mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help bind the oil and yolk and add a sharp, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets before the yolk can coat them. Adding it too fast overwhelms the emulsifier, so the mixture breaks and curdles.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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