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Mayonnaise Dressing

A simple homemade mayonnaise dressing made with egg, oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg until well mixed.

  2. Slowly add the vegetable oil while continuously whisking to emulsify.

  3. Add vinegar or lemon juice and salt, whisking until smooth and creamy.

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. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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
Its proteins and lecithin stabilise the oil droplets, forming a thick, creamy emulsion.
Vegetable oil
Supplies the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich body and smooth texture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while whisking. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets before the egg proteins can coat them. Adding it too fast overwhelms the egg, so the emulsion breaks and the mixture separates into a greasy liquid.

“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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