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Salad

Mayonnaise for Salads

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, onion, sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mayonnaise for Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. Combine the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and the raw egg yolk, and stir until creamy.

  2. Add the mustard, grated onion, white pepper, sugar, lemon juice, and vinegar, then mix until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the oil, one drop at a time, while stirring vigorously to ensure thorough mixing.

Finish

  1. Optionally, add capers and chopped parsley, but omit them for sweetbread salad.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and water so the sauce stays thick instead of separating.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their fat and fine texture add body and smoothness to the emulsion.
Prepared mustard
Acts as a second emulsifier that helps hold the oil droplets evenly dispersed.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving richness and a thick, spreadable body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps balance the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added slowly while whisking so it breaks into tiny droplets that the egg yolk lecithin can surround. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, and the mayonnaise breaks into a greasy, separated liquid.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, onion, sugar, lemon, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, onion, sugar, lemon, white wine, 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.

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