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Mayonnaise Without Oil

A thick, oil‑free mayonnaise made with lemon or lime juice, mustard, egg yolks, sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Without Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine lemon or lime juice, dry mustard, egg yolks, sugar, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

Cook the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, slowly add the cream while stirring.

  2. Cook until the mixture thickens.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the cream and thicken the sauce as they gently heat.
Rich, sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Lemon or lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the sauce stays smooth and does not separate.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the acidity.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture thickens. Egg yolks thicken from gentle heat but scramble if they get too hot. Keep the double boiler at a low heat and stir constantly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, egg, sugar, pepper, cream):

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

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