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Sauce

Sauce Mayonaise

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Sauce Mayonaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks and mixed mustard.

  2. Slowly add the salad oil while stirring constantly until the mixture thickens enough to turn the bowl upside down without spilling.

  3. Add the vinegar, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir briskly until the sauce is light in color.

Serve

  1. Serve on lobster, lettuce, or fish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 into a thick, stable sauce.
Mixed mustard
Helps hold the oil and vinegar together so the sauce stays smooth.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich body and texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while stirring constantly. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets around the egg yolk proteins to form an emulsion. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, so the sauce stays runny or breaks and separates.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

More mayonnaise recipes

Dressing 251Sauce 29Chicken Salad 16Lobster 12Salmon 12Salmon Salad 11 See all 305 →

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