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Salad Sauce, Mayonnaise

A creamy dressing made from egg yolk, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salad Sauce, Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. Place the egg yolk in a bowl and remove any speck.

  2. Beat the yolk lightly, then add salt and pepper.

  3. Slowly pour in the oil, drop by drop, while beating the mixture quickly.

  4. Once it begins to thicken, increase the oil quantity and continue beating until smooth and thick.

Season and store

  1. Gradually add white wine vinegar to taste, aiming for 1 teaspoon of vinegar for every 8 teaspoons of oil.

  2. Store the sauce in a cool place until needed.

  3. For added flavor, consider using a little tarragon vinegar.

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 + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. White wine + tarragontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 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

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together as thick and smooth.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and its thick, creamy body.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added drop by drop at first while beating, so the droplets disperse and the yolk can emulsify them. 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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