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Mayonnaise Sauce

A cold egg yolk-based sauce thickened with oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard powder, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. Put the uncooked yolk of an egg into a cold bowl and beat it well with a fork.

  2. Add the salt and mustard powder, and mix well for a minute.

  3. Slowly pour in the oil, a few drops at a time, alternating with a few drops of vinegar.

  4. Continue until the sauce thickens and has a jelly-like appearance.

Finish the sauce

  1. Once thickened, alternate adding lemon juice with the oil.

  2. When the egg has absorbed 1 cup of oil, add a pinch of cayenne and 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  3. Taste and adjust salt, mustard, cayenne, and vinegar as needed.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together as a thick emulsion.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and body as tiny droplets suspended in the yolk.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and fresh flavor that balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard powder
Acts as an additional emulsifier and adds a sharp, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added a few drops at a time at first. If it goes in too fast, the droplets cannot be surrounded by the yolk's emulsifiers, and the sauce breaks into a greasy liquid that will not thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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