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Sauce

Mayonnaise with Butter

A creamy sauce made from eggs, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 with Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, stir the dry mustard with the vinegar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the lemon juice and season with sugar, salt, pepper, and ginger.

  4. Slowly add the melted butter while stirring continuously.

  5. Place the mixture in a double boiler and stir until 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Provide proteins that emulsify and thicken the sauce as they set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that cuts through the fat and rounds out the flavor.
Dry mustard
Contains natural emulsifiers that help hold the fat and liquid together.

The step that matters

Slowly add the melted butter while stirring continuously. Adding fat too quickly before the egg proteins are dispersed can break the emulsion, causing the sauce to separate and turn greasy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, butter, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper. 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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