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Salad

Mayonnaise for Salads

A salad dressing made from egg yolks, oil, mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 for Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Powder the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs and mix with salt.

  2. Add the oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

  3. Stir in mustard, pepper, and sugar.

  4. Whip the raw egg to a froth and beat it into the dressing.

  5. Pour in the vinegar gradually, using a total of ½ cup.

Dress the salad

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix well with two forks.

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Powdered yolks blend smoothly and help emulsify the oil into the dressing.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, giving the dressing its richness and body.
Raw egg
Its proteins add structure and help hold the emulsion together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Prepared mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help keep the oil and water-based parts from separating.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets while stirring constantly. Adding it too fast overwhelms the egg proteins, so the emulsion breaks and the mayonnaise separates into a greasy liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Cabbagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, sugar, 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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