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Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with mustard, sugar, boiling water, eggs, vinegar, butter, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Mix mustard and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture to form a paste.

Cook the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the paste, eggs, and vinegar.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted.

Finish

  1. Let cool, then add sweet cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavour and texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture when folded in after cooling.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until thickened. Eggs thicken as their proteins set, and high heat can curdle them into lumps. Gentle, steady heat with constant stirring gives a smooth, thick dressing.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, egg, vinegar, butter, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, egg, vinegar, butter, cream. 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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