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Sauce

Mayonaise Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs and place the yolks in a small bowl.

  2. Set the bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice.

  3. Add salt and pepper to the yolks and stir with the back of a wooden spoon.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Slowly add the oil and vinegar drop by drop, then more quickly, until fully combined.

  2. For a white appearance, add a little lemon juice and the melted aspic jelly, whisking to combine.

  3. For cardinal mayonnaise, pound lobster coral, sieve it, season with cayenne, and mix into the mayonnaise along with 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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich body and texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness and sharpens the flavour.
Aspic jelly
Adds gelatin that helps set and stabilise the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly add the oil and vinegar. Oil must be added drop by drop at first so the yolk lecithin can surround the droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving a runny, separated sauce.

“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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