Skip to main content
Dessert

Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with salt, mustard, powdered sugar, cayenne pepper, egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 base

  1. In a bowl, mix the salt, mustard, powdered sugar, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the yolks of the fresh eggs and beat with a wooden spoon until slightly thickened.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon of vinegar and blend well with the other ingredients.

Add the oil

  1. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while beating constantly. Once several teaspoons of oil have been added, you can add the oil faster.

  2. If the mixture becomes too thick, add a little lemon juice, then more oil, alternating until combined.

  3. Finally, add the remaining vinegar.

  4. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to use.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 into the mixture and thicken it into a smooth dressing.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and richness of the dressing.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and water phases together as a stabilizing emulsifier.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and thins the dressing when it becomes too thick.
Vinegar
Adds acidity for sharp flavor and helps balance the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while beating constantly. Oil must be dispersed into the egg yolk in tiny droplets so the emulsion forms. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the mixture can split or fail to thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

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

More mayonnaise dressing recipes

Cooked 4Aspic 3Potato 3 See all 251 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes