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Sauce Mayonnaise

A cold egg yolk-based sauce thickened with olive oil, seasoned with white pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sauce Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the egg and olive oil in the refrigerator before use.

  2. In a bowl, separate the egg yolks from the whites and discard the whites.

  3. Add white pepper and coarse sea salt to the yolks and mix gently.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring steadily in one direction.

  2. Continue adding oil until about 1 cup is incorporated.

  3. If the mixture starts to crack, add a few drops of vinegar and mix until smooth before resuming with the oil.

Finish and serve

  1. After the sauce is made, you can add lemon juice for acidity if desired.

  2. Serve very cold with salads.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 yolk
Emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together as a thick, stable mixture.
Olive oil
Forms the body and richness of the sauce as tiny droplets suspended in the yolk.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the emulsion and brightens the flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and freshness to balance the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added drop by drop at first, while stirring steadily, so the droplets are fully dispersed by the yolk's lecithin. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion and the sauce separates or cracks.

“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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