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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, lemon juice, vinegar, oil, whipped cream, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, and salt until very light.

  2. Gradually add a few drops of oil at a time until the dressing thickens.

  3. Continue adding oil and vinegar until all are used.

Finish and chill

  1. Stir in the lemon juice, whipped cream, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Chill the dressing in the refrigerator until ready to use.

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 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
Emulsify the oil and vinegar so the dressing thickens and holds together.
Oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed into the yolks, builds the thick body of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Whipped cream
Adds air and fat that soften the texture and lighten the dressing.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion by binding oil and water-based liquids together.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added a few drops at a time at first so it disperses into the yolks as tiny droplets. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, and the emulsion breaks into a thin, oily liquid that will not thicken.

“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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