Skip to main content
Dessert

Mayonnaise Deessing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, oil, tarragon vinegar, mustard, condensed milk, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Deessing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the raw mustard and condensed milk until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the oil until the mixture thickens to a rich cream.

  3. Stir in the vinegar, continuing to mix in one direction.

  4. Add the lemon juice.

  5. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks and gently fold it into the dressing.

Chill

  1. Refrigerate until ready to use, preferably a few hours in advance.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the dressing, giving it a thick, creamy body.
Oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed through the yolks, forms the rich body of the dressing.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it lightens the dressing and adds airy volume.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Raw mustard
Its emulsifying compounds help hold the oil and yolks together as a stable emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the lecithin in the yolks. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing thin and oily instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, tarragon, vinegar, mustard, condensed milk):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tarragon, vinegar, mustard, condensed milk. 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.

More mayonnaise dressing recipes

Cooked 4Aspic 3Potato 3 See all 251 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes