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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A cold sauce made from Velouté or Blanquette, melted white jelly, olive oil, lemon juice, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a round-bottomed basin, mix Veloute or Blanquette sauce with melted white jelly.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg to taste.

  3. Set the basin in a bucket or saucepan with broken ice.

  4. Using a wooden spoon, slowly pour in olive oil while stirring continuously.

  5. When the sauce thickens, add lemon juice and chopped chervil and tarragon.

  6. Stir well and serve.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + tarragontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Forms the emulsion that gives the sauce its thick, rich body when whisked in slowly.
Veloute or blanquette sauce
Provides the cooked base that gives the sauce body and a smooth, creamy texture.
White jelly
Adds body and helps stabilise the sauce as it thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Pouring in the olive oil. Oil must be added slowly while stirring continuously so it emulsifies into the base; adding it too fast can cause the sauce to split and fail to thicken.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, pepper, olive, lemon, chervil, tarragon):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, olive, lemon, chervil, tarragon. 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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