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Mayonnaise Dressing

A cooked dressing made from sugar, vinegar, butter, flour, egg yolks, mustard, and sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar and vinegar base

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and vinegar.

  2. Cook the sugar and vinegar together until blended.

Make the butter mixture

  1. In a separate bowl, mix butter, flour, mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper until smooth.

  2. Add Worcestershire sauce and celery extract, if using, to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir the beaten egg yolks into the butter mixture.

Combine and finish

  1. Cook the egg yolk mixture with the vinegar and sugar mixture until well blended.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Stir in sour cream until well combined.

  4. Let cool.

  5. Transfer to a bottle for storage.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a smooth emulsion.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the dressing.
Flour
Stabilizes the mixture and helps it thicken without breaking.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness.
Sour cream
Adds tang and creaminess to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the egg yolk mixture with the vinegar and sugar mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if they get too hot they can scramble into lumps. Cook gently and keep stirring so the dressing becomes smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, butter, flour, mustard, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, butter, flour, mustard, pepper, sauce. 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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