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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, oil, vinegars, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon 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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs and place the yolks in a large basin.

Make the emulsion

  1. Gradually add the oil drop by drop while stirring continuously to prevent curdling.

  2. Once the mixture is thick like a soft ball, mix in the dry ingredients first.

  3. Then add the vinegars.

  4. Finally add the cream.

  5. If you don't have cream, substitute with a little milk and more vinegar.

Store

  1. Store in a bottle and cork it for later use.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, holding the dressing together.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, giving the dressing its richness and body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegars.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Mustard
Acts as an additional emulsifier and adds sharp flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil added too quickly cannot be absorbed by the yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the mixture curdles instead of thickening into a stable dressing.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Tarragonthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, sugar, vinegar, 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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