Skip to main content
Salad

Mayonnaise Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with raw egg yolk, olive oil, vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, combine the raw egg yolk.

  2. Slowly stir in olive oil in a fine stream until emulsified.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and mustard to taste.

Make the dressing

  1. For a simple dressing, mix 3 tablespoons of olive oil with 1 tablespoon of scraped onion, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of vinegar and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour over the salad.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 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

Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and water-based ingredients, giving the dressing its thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Provides fat that forms the bulk of the emulsion, contributing richness and smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in olive oil in a fine stream until emulsified. Adding oil too quickly prevents the yolk from coating and dispersing the oil droplets, so the mixture can break and separate instead of thickening into a stable emulsion.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes