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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with flour, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, milk, eggs, and vinegar.

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

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add enough milk to create a thin paste.

  3. Incorporate the eggs and 1½ cups of milk.

  4. Stir in the vinegar.

  5. Boil the mixture while stirring continuously until it thickens.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Thickens the mixture as it cooks, giving it body.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the mixture as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and eggs thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity, giving the sauce its tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring continuously until it thickens. Flour starch needs to reach a boil to swell and thicken the liquid, and egg proteins can scramble if the mixture sits on heat unstirred. Constant stirring keeps heat even and the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, pepper, milk, egg, 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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