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Sauce

Mayonnaise of Salmon

A creamy sauce made with salmon, egg yolk, mustard, oil, vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper, and garnished with parsley or celery tops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mayonnaise of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolk and mustard.

  2. Stir in the oil drop by drop while mixing continuously until creamy.

  3. Once the mixture is stiff, add the vinegar, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with parsley or celery tops before serving.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main protein, flavor, and bulk of the dish.
Egg yolk
Acts as an emulsifier, holding the oil and vinegar together in a creamy, stable sauce.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion so the oil stays dispersed and the sauce does not separate.
Oil
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce its smooth, thick texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Egg yolk can only emulsify a limited amount of oil at a time. Adding oil too quickly or stopping the mixing lets the oil separate out, so the sauce stays thin or breaks instead of turning creamy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, vinegar, pepper, parsley. 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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