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Mayonnaise Dressing

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the emulsion

  1. Place the egg yolks in a bowl and add a pinch of salt. Stir with a fork until broken.

  2. Add the oil drop by drop while stirring in the same direction.

  3. Add a drop of vinegar when the mixture looks oily.

  4. As the mixture thickens, add the oil faster while continuing to stir.

  5. Add just enough acid to prevent curdling.

Season and finish

  1. Once thick and smooth, season with salt, red pepper, mustard, and lemon juice.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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
Lecithin in the yolk emulsifies the oil and water, creating a stable, thick sauce.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Acid helps stabilise the emulsion and prevents it from curdling.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added drop by drop at first, while stirring steadily in one direction. Adding it too fast before the yolks have absorbed it breaks the emulsion, so the sauce separates and stays runny instead of thickening.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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

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