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Mayonnaise Dressing

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. Place the yolks of two eggs in a cold bowl and beat with a fork.

  2. Add salt, cayenne, and mustard, and mix well.

  3. Slowly add olive oil, a few drops at a time, while stirring rapidly in one direction.

  4. Occasionally add vinegar or lemon juice while adding the oil.

Adjust and rescue

  1. If the dressing is too thick, add more vinegar or lemon juice until desired consistency is reached.

  2. If the dressing curdles, start over with new yolks and gradually incorporate the curdled mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, holding the dressing together.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that gives the dressing its body and rich texture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances richness and helps thin the emulsion to the right consistency.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharper flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be dispersed into the yolk in tiny droplets before more is added. Pouring too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifier, so the mixture breaks and curdles.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, olive, vinegar):

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

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

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