Skip to main content
Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A cold egg yolk-based dressing flavored with salt, cayenne, mustard, olive oil, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 emulsion

  1. In a clean, cold bowl, beat the egg yolks with a fork for about one minute.

  2. Add the salt, cayenne, and mustard, and mix well.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring rapidly and steadily.

  4. After adding ½ cup of oil, alternate with a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar.

Adjust and rescue

  1. If the dressing is too thick, add more vinegar until the desired consistency is reached.

  2. If the dressing curdles, start over with new egg yolks and gradually add the curdled mixture while stirring.

  3. For best results in warm weather, chill the bowl and ingredients in ice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 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. Pepper + mustardtop 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 yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, creating a thick, stable sauce.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing, giving it richness and body as it is dispersed into droplets.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the emulsion balanced.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets while stirring. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifier, so the mixture breaks and curdles.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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