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Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, capers, sugar, celery seed, pepper, and salt.

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

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Warm the vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, celery seed, mustard, mashed capers, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  3. Gradually add the warm vinegar to the mixture, stirring continuously.

  4. Cook over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Serve with canned salmon or use as a dressing for deviled ham.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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 yolks
Provide emulsifying and thickening proteins that set the dressing as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and balances the richness of the yolks.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat while stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but too much heat can scramble them into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, mustard, capers, sugar, 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.

More mayonnaise recipes

Dressing 251Sauce 29Chicken Salad 16Lobster 12Salmon 12Salmon Salad 11 See all 305 →

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