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Modified Mayonnaise

A creamy sauce made with flour, mustard, paprika, cayenne, vinegar, egg yolk, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Modified Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour, salt, mustard, paprika, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Add the vinegar or lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of oil, and boiling water.

  3. Stir until thick.

Finish the mayonnaise

  1. Cool the mixture.

  2. Add the egg yolk and beat well.

  3. Gradually add the remaining oil and mix thoroughly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Thickens the mixture as its starch swells in the hot water, giving body to the base.
Egg yolk
Contains lecithin, an emulsifier that holds the oil and water-based liquids together.
Salad oil
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, spoonable texture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives a sharp, bright flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Adds flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Gradually add the remaining oil. Oil must be added slowly while beating so it disperses into tiny droplets that the egg yolk can hold. Adding it too fast overwhelms the emulsifier, so the mixture separates and fails to thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, vinegar, 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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