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Mayonnaise Dressing

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Chill utensils and ingredients thoroughly.

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until creamy.

  2. Add salt, sugar, dry lemon juice, and vinegar; beat again.

  3. Slowly add olive oil while beating until thickened.

  4. If the mixture gets too thick, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar.

  5. Continue adding oil and alternating with lemon juice or vinegar until fully incorporated.

Finish

  1. For improved flavor, fold in whipped cream just before serving.

  2. Optionally, add whipped egg whites to increase bulk.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water so the sauce stays thick instead of separating.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed into droplets, forms the body and richness of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity for sharp flavor and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity for brightness and can thin the sauce when it gets too thick.
Whipped cream
Adds airy volume and a softer, richer texture when folded in at the end.

The step that matters

Slowly add olive oil while beating. Oil must be added a little at a time so it breaks into tiny droplets that the egg yolk lecithin can hold. Adding it too fast makes the mayonnaise split and become oily and runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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