Skip to main content
Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with powdered sugar, salt, dry mustard, egg yolks, olive oil, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, mix together the powdered sugar, salt, dry mustard, and egg yolks.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring constantly.

  3. Thin the mixture with lemon juice or vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve over your favorite 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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon 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
Emulsifiers that hold the oil and water-based ingredients together, giving the dressing its thick body.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, providing richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and thins the mixture to a pourable consistency.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, aromatic flavor.

The step that matters

Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring constantly. Oil must be dispersed into the egg yolks in tiny droplets so the emulsion forms. Adding it too fast can break the mixture into separated oil and liquid, so the dressing will not thicken properly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

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