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Mayonnaise Dressing

A custard-like dressing made with milk or cream, vinegar, egg yolks, oil, sugar, salt, and mustard.

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 ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a basin, mix the salad oil, sugar, coarse sea salt, and mustard well.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and then the vinegar.

  3. Finally, stir in the milk or cream.

Cook the custard

  1. Place the basin in a saucepan with boiling water, ensuring the water surrounds it to half its depth.

  2. Stir the mixture over heat until it thickens to a custard-like consistency.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their proteins set when heated, thickening the mixture into a custard-like texture.
Salad oil
Adds fat, giving the dressing richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity, giving the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Milk or single cream
Adds moisture and softens the texture, making the dressing lighter and smoother.
Mustard
Its compounds help hold the oil and liquids together, supporting a stable emulsion.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Thickening over the water bath. Egg yolks thicken into a custard when heated gently. If the heat is too high, the yolks can scramble and curdle, so keep the water surrounding the basin and stir the mixture steadily while it thickens.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, vinegar, egg, sugar. 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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