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A Complete Recipe for the Famous Mayonnaise Sauce

A simple mayonnaise sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

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

A Complete Recipe for the Famous Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, mustard, and vinegar until smooth.

  2. Slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking continuously until the mixture thickens.

Season and store

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

  2. Serve immediately or refrigerate for later use.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together and thick.
Dijon mustard
Mustard particles also stabilise the emulsion, helping it stay smooth and prevent separating.
Vegetable oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives mayonnaise its rich body and texture.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Drizzling the oil slowly while whisking. Oil must be added a little at a time so it breaks into fine droplets that the yolk lecithin can surround. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, and the emulsion breaks into a runny, separated mixture.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, white wine, vinegar, pepper, lemon. 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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