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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Vinegar and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,154 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strain the yolks of four eggs into a basin and place in a cool place or on ice.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Pour in salad oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

  2. When 1 teaspoon of oil is blended, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  3. Continue adding oil and vinegar alternately until the mixture is thick like cream.

Season

  1. Add white pepper to taste and more salt if necessary.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. 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
Emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together as a thick, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives mayonnaise its rich, thick body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity for sharp flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop at the start. Oil added too fast at first cannot be absorbed by the yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the mixture separates into a greasy liquid. Slow addition lets fine droplets form and be coated by lecithin in the yolk, building a thick, stable sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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