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Mayonnaise Dressing

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

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

Prepare

  1. Chill the oil, bowl, and spoon before starting.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard, paprika, and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil, drop by drop at first, while stirring constantly.

  4. As the mixture thickens, alternate adding lemon juice and vinegar to thin it out.

  5. Continue adding the oil until fully incorporated.

  6. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  7. If the mixture curdles, add it slowly to another egg yolk to fix it.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water into a thick, stable sauce.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and richness of the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps thin the thickening mixture.
Egg whites
Add beaten air that lightens the texture of the dressing.
Mustard
Its compounds help stabilize the emulsion so it holds together.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added slowly, drop by drop at first, while stirring constantly. Adding it too fast overwhelms the egg yolk's ability to emulsify, causing the mixture to curdle or separate.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, sugar, lemon, 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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