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Dessert

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, and optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a small bowl, mix the mustard, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the egg yolks and stir well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil a few drops at a time, stirring until the mixture thickens.

Thin and finish

  1. Once thick, thin the dressing with a little lemon juice.

  2. Continue adding oil and lemon juice alternately, then add the vinegar.

  3. If desired, fold in the whipped cream just before serving to make it whiter and thinner.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 and thickening it.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, giving the dressing its rich body and fat content.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help stabilise the oil and yolk mixture, reducing the chance of separation.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and thins the dressing as it is added.
Whipped cream
Lightens the texture and makes the dressing paler and thinner when folded in.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added a few drops at a time at the start. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing stays runny or separates.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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