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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from mustard, egg yolk, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and optional spices.

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

Make the emulsion

  1. Mix the mustard with a little water to form a thick paste.

  2. Stir in the egg yolk.

  3. Gradually add olive oil, one teaspoon at a time, while stirring constantly with a fork.

Season and adjust

  1. Season with vinegar, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice if desired.

  2. If the dressing thickens too quickly, thin it with vinegar.

  3. If it curdles, start again with a little mustard paste and another egg yolk, gradually stirring in the first mixture.

Serve

  1. Keep the dressing on ice until served.

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. Mustard + olivetop 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

Egg yolk
Lecithin in the yolk emulsifies the oil and water, so the dressing becomes thick and stable.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives the dressing its body and richness.
Mustard
Mustard's compounds help stabilize the emulsion and add sharpness to the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added slowly, a little at a time, while stirring constantly so it disperses into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifier, and the dressing breaks or curdles.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

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