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Mayonnaise of Fowl

A salad of lettuce, spring onions, and boiled fowl served with a mayonnaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Mayonnaise of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lettuces and spring onions.

  2. Soak them in water for 2 hours.

  3. Boil the eggs for 12 minutes.

  4. Cool the eggs.

  5. Wipe the salad leaves.

  6. Break them into 1-inch pieces.

  7. Chop the onions finely.

  8. Cut the cold boiled fowl into neat pieces, about ¼ inch thick and 1½ inches square.

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the yolks to a powder.

  2. Mix the yolk powder with mustard powder and salt.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

  4. Pound into a paste.

  5. Gradually mix in the salad oil, tarragon vinegar, and French vinegar until the sauce is thick and smooth.

  6. Chill the sauce in a cool place or on ice for 1 hour.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a bowl, layer half of the salad, half of the fowl, and half of the sauce.

  2. Repeat with the remaining salad, fowl, and sauce.

  3. Sprinkle the chopped onions on top.

  4. Garnish with alternating slices of beetroot and cucumber before serving.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 vinegar into a thick, smooth mayonnaise-style sauce.
Salad oil
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it richness and a smooth texture.
Mustard powder
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury bite.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and aroma that cut through the richness of the oil and yolks.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the oil and vinegars. Oil must be added slowly to the yolk paste so it emulsifies. Adding it too fast can split the sauce into separate oil and liquid, leaving it thin instead of thick and smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, beetroot, cucumber):

  1. Endivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, beetroot, cucumber. 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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