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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made by emulsifying egg yolks, oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Chill the plate, eggs, oil, and fork before starting.

  2. In a bowl, combine the yolks of two eggs and ½ tablespoon of salt. Stir with a fork until well mixed.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Add the oil drop by drop while stirring continuously in the same direction.

  2. When the mixture starts to look oily, add a drop of vinegar to prevent separation.

  3. As the mixture thickens, you can add the oil more quickly while continuing to stir.

Season

  1. Season with additional salt, red pepper, and lemon juice if desired.

  2. The finished dressing should be thick, smooth, and not overly acidic.

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. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsifiers that hold the oil and water in the sauce together, giving it a thick, smooth body.
Oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed into droplets, gives the dressing its rich texture and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the emulsion and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must go in drop by drop at first while stirring constantly. Adding it too fast before the yolks have absorbed it can break the emulsion, so the dressing separates and looks oily instead of thick.

“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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