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Salad

Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix salt and egg yolks with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add dry mustard and mix until smooth using a hand mixer.

  3. Gradually add salad oil, a few drops at a time, beating until thick.

  4. Finally, add vinegar until the dressing reaches the desired consistency.

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

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

  3. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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 yolks
Emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together, giving the dressing its thick, creamy structure.
Salad oil
Fat that forms the body of the dressing when beaten slowly into the yolks.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury flavour.
Strong vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and thins the dressing to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil added too fast cannot be absorbed by the egg yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing separates. Adding it a few drops at a time while beating lets the yolk coat each droplet and stay thick.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Cucumberfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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