Skip to main content
Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, olive oil, lemon or vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and optional egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 2 raw eggs.

  2. Slowly add 1 pint of olive oil drop by drop until it thickens like paste.

  3. Add juice of 1 lemon or vinegar to thin it to your desired consistency.

  4. Mix in the mashed yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs.

  5. Stir in 1 teaspoon of dry mustard or 1 tablespoon of prepared mustard.

  6. Season with ¼ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of pepper.

Serve

  1. Optionally, chop the egg whites and add them to the salad or use them as a garnish.

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. Olive + mustardtop 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. Lemon + mustardtop 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

Raw egg yolks
Emulsifier that holds the oil and water-based acid together as a smooth, thick dressing.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed in droplets, makes the dressing thick and rich.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts the richness and thins the dressing to the desired consistency.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add body and a firmer, creamier texture to the dressing.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil slowly, drop by drop. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets among the egg yolk proteins to form a stable emulsion. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, so the mixture separates and fails to thicken into a paste.

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.

More mayonnaise dressing recipes

Cooked 4Aspic 3Potato 3 See all 251 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes