Skip to main content
Sauce

Quick Mayonnaise

A quick homemade mayonnaise made with lemon juice, salt, egg or yolks, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and olive 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 ↓

Quick Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small deep bowl, combine lemon juice, salt, egg, and 5 teaspoons of olive oil.

  2. Beat the mixture with a hand mixer until thoroughly mixed.

  3. Gradually add the remaining olive oil, 2 or 3 tablespoons at a time, beating well between each addition.

  4. Ensure all ingredients are cold.

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. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 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).

Lemon and egg 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
Egg yolk lecithin binds oil and water, letting the sauce emulsify and thicken.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it body, richness and flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be dispersed as tiny droplets, each coated by egg yolk proteins and lecithin. Adding it in small amounts while beating lets the emulsion form. Adding too much at once can break the emulsion so the sauce stays oily and does not thicken.

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.

More mayonnaise recipes

Dressing 251Sauce 29Chicken Salad 16Lobster 12Salmon 12Salmon Salad 11 See all 305 →

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes