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Cooked Mayonnaise Dressing

A mayonnaise dressing made by cooking vinegar and egg yolk, then adding butter, seasoning, and thinning with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Cooked Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine boiling vinegar and beaten egg yolk in a bowl over boiling water.

  2. Cook until stiff.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in butter until cool and stiff.

Season and thin

  1. Once cooled, season with salt, pepper, and mustard.

  2. Thin to desired consistency with 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Cooks and thickens with the vinegar to form the stiff, emulsified base of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cooked base set firm and smooth as it cools.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps the egg yolk cook into a stable base.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and softens the set dressing to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Cook until stiff over boiling water. Egg yolk proteins thicken with gentle heat and can scramble if overheated. Cooking over simmering water, and stopping once the mixture is stiff, keeps the dressing smooth rather than curdled.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, butter, pepper, 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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