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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, anchovy sauce, and optional boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of two raw eggs with salt using a wooden spoon until smooth.

  2. Add the mustard and stir well.

  3. Gradually pour in the salad oil while stirring continuously.

  4. Add the vinegar and anchovy sauce, stirring until creamy.

  5. For better preservation, stir in boiling water drop by drop before bottling.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mustard + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together as a smooth, creamy dressing.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, giving the dressing its richness and body.
Thick mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the oil and vinegar stay blended.
Tarragon or malt vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the salad oil while stirring continuously. Adding oil too fast overwhelms the egg yolk emulsifier, so the mixture separates instead of thickening into a stable, creamy emulsion.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, anchovy, 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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