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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with eggs, olive oil, mustard, salt, pepper, and optional vinegar, lemon juice, or melted butter.

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

Prepare

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

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl, add white pepper and salt, and mix thoroughly.

  2. Stir in the mustard.

  3. Add the olive oil drop by drop, stirring slowly and in the same direction.

  4. If the mixture begins to crack, add a little vinegar while stirring.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  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

Eggs
Egg yolk lecithin emulsifies the oil and water so the sauce holds together and becomes thick.
Olive oil
Forms the fat phase that gives the dressing its rich body and creamy texture.
Made mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help stabilise the emulsion and add a sharp, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added drop by drop while stirring in one direction so tiny droplets disperse evenly. Adding it too fast overwhelms the egg's emulsifiers, causing the sauce to break or curdle.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, mustard, egg, white pepper, vinegar, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, mustard, egg, white pepper, vinegar, butter. 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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