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Sauce

White Mayonnaise Sauce

A light, egg‑based sauce made with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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. Place the yolk of a hard-boiled egg in a small bowl and break it up finely with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add salt and pepper, then stir briskly while pouring in the olive oil drop by drop.

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

  4. Optionally, add French mustard for extra flavor.

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 water, letting the sauce thicken into a stable mayonnaise.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness and body as it is dispersed into droplets.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the emulsion stable.
French mustard
Adds flavor and also helps stabilize the emulsion, as mustard contains emulsifying compounds.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets before the yolk can coat them. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the emulsion breaks into a greasy, separated sauce.

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.

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