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Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare

  1. Chill the plate, eggs, oil, and fork before starting.

Make the emulsion

  1. Combine the yolks of the eggs and salt in a bowl.

  2. Stir with a fork until well mixed.

  3. Slowly add the oil drop by drop while stirring continuously in the same direction.

  4. Add a drop of vinegar when the mixture looks oily.

  5. As the mixture thickens, add the oil more quickly while continuing to stir.

  6. Add just enough acid to prevent separation.

Season

  1. Season with additional salt, red pepper, and lemon 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the dressing together as a smooth mixture.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing, giving it richness, body, and a thick, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the emulsion and prevents it from separating.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be dispersed into the yolks in tiny droplets while stirring. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifier, so the mixture breaks and separates instead of thickening.

“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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