Skip to main content
Drink

White Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolk, olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, break up the yolk of a hard-boiled egg with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add salt and pepper.

  3. Stir briskly while slowly pouring in the olive oil, drop by drop.

  4. For every eighth teaspoon of oil, add a teaspoon of white vinegar.

  5. If desired, mix in a tablespoon of French mustard.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and vinegar, holding the sauce together.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed in droplets, makes the sauce thick and rich.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop while stirring. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets around the yolk before more is added. Pouring too fast overwhelms the yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns oily and runny.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, olive, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes