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Mayonnaise Sauce

A homemade mayonnaise sauce made from eggs, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and optional mustard or tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs into two bowls.

  2. Stir the yolks gently to break them.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and French vinegar to the yolks.

  4. With your thumb partially covering the top of the salad oil bottle, pour the oil in drop by drop while whisking continuously.

  5. Once combined, stir in mustard or tarragon vinegar if desired.

  6. The sauce is now ready for use.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsifiers that hold the oil and vinegar together as a thick, smooth sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in tiny droplets, gives mayonnaise its rich body.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop while whisking. Oil added too fast cannot be dispersed into the yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce stays runny or separates. Slow addition with constant whisking lets each droplet be coated by yolk proteins before more oil is added.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, vinegar, tarragon):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, vinegar, 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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