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Mayonnaise Dressing

A homemade mayonnaise dressing made with mustard, salt, sugar, cayenne, oil, lemon juice or vinegar, and egg yolk or whole egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,816 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine mustard, salt, fruit sugar, and cayenne.

  2. Slowly whisk in the salad oil until emulsified.

  3. Add lemon juice or vinegar and the egg yolk (or whole egg).

  4. Continue whisking until the dressing is smooth and thick.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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 sauce together.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness and body as it emulsifies.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help the oil and water blend and keep the sauce stable.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added gradually while whisking so droplets disperse finely and the egg emulsifier can coat them. Adding it too fast can break the sauce into a greasy, separated liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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