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Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil, and optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne, and salt until light and thick.

  2. Place the bowl in a pan of ice water while beating.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil a little at a time, continuing to beat.

  4. When the mixture thickens and the beater becomes hard, add a little vinegar.

  5. Once all the oil and vinegar are incorporated, the dressing should be very thick.

  6. Stir in the lemon juice and whipped cream, then refrigerate until needed.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water, giving the dressing its thick, creamy structure.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and rich flavor of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Mustard
Acts as a second emulsifier that helps hold the oil and yolk mixture together.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added a little at a time while beating so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the egg yolk. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing thin and separated.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, pepper, egg, vinegar, olive, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, pepper, egg, vinegar, olive, cream. 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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