Skip to main content
Main

Cooked Mayonnaise Dressing

A mayonnaise dressing made by cooking eggs, mustard, flour, milk, sugar, butter, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cooked Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, mustard, and salt, mashing lumps smooth with the back of a spoon.

  2. Slightly beat the yolks and mix them into the dry ingredients.

  3. Add the melted butter while beating continuously.

  4. Stir in the cold milk and cook over a pan of hot water, stirring slowly until the mixture coats the back of a spoon.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the hot vinegar.

  6. If the mixture curdles, add 2 tablespoons of cold water and beat until smooth.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the dressing as they cook and give it a rich, creamy body.
Flour
Starch thickens the mixture and helps keep it smooth and stable while cooking.
Butter
Melted fat adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the dressing.
Milk
Liquid that loosens the thickened base and adds mild sweetness and creaminess.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its characteristic tang.

The step that matters

Cooking over hot water while stirring slowly. Egg yolks set at gentle heat, so cooking slowly over hot water thickens the base evenly. Too much heat curdles the yolks, which is why the recipe calls for adding cold water and beating if curdling starts.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, sugar, butter, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes