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Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with egg yolk, salt, sugar, oil, lemon juice, and optional onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the egg yolk in a bowl.

  2. Add salt and sugar.

  3. Slowly drizzle in oil while stirring briskly until thickened.

  4. Once thick, add oil more quickly until desired quantity is reached.

  5. Slowly pour in lemon juice while beating until well mixed and to taste.

  6. Add onion juice if desired.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Lemon + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + oniontop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the oil droplets suspended to form a thick sauce.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and body as it is emulsified into the yolk.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Drizzling in the oil. Oil must be added slowly at first while stirring briskly, so that small droplets are dispersed and the yolk can emulsify them. Adding oil too fast breaks the emulsion and the sauce fails to thicken.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon. 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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