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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolk, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill a soup plate and a silver fork thoroughly.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Add the salt to the egg yolk on the chilled plate and stir until thick, wiping off any moisture.

  2. Add a few drops of oil at a time, occasionally adding a little lemon juice, until the mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny.

  3. Once thick, add the oil by the teaspoonful, alternating with a few drops of lemon juice until all is used.

  4. If more salt is desired, dissolve it in lemon juice.

Adjust and rescue

  1. To thin the mayonnaise, add lemon juice, vinegar, cream, milk, or ice water as desired.

  2. If the mayonnaise curdles, add a fresh chilled egg yolk and beat until 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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Emulsifies the oil into the lemon juice, forming a thick, stable sauce.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in droplets, makes the sauce thick and rich.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and helps the emulsion thicken while balancing the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at the start. Oil must be added a few drops at a time so the yolk can break it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the emulsion breaks and curdles.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Pumpkinfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive. 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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