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Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks and mustard with a fork.

  2. Slowly add olive oil, just a few drops at a time, while stirring continuously.

  3. Continue adding oil until the mixture is thick and creamy.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, white pepper, and add malt and tarragon vinegar to taste, using more malt than tarragon.

  2. Adjust the thickness with vinegar as needed.

  3. Serve with lettuce, celery, tomatoes, or other vegetables.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Olive + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 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
Emulsify the oil and water into a thick, stable sauce.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that gives the dressing its rich body and creamy texture.
Mustard
Helps hold the emulsion together and adds a sharp flavour.
Malt vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, tangy flavour to the dressing.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and an aromatic herbal flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Egg yolk lecithin can only bind oil into a stable emulsion if the oil is added gradually while stirring. Adding it too fast lets the droplets merge, so the mixture splits and stays thin and oily.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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