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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and optional mustard or tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

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 ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the yolks of the eggs into one bowl and the whites into another bowl.

  2. Stir the yolks gently to break them.

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

Make the mayonnaise

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

  2. If desired, stir in the mustard or tarragon vinegar smoothly.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Egg + tarragontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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 yolks
Emulsifiers that hold the oil and vinegar together as a thick, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich, creamy body.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps balance the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop while whisking. Oil added too quickly cannot be absorbed by the yolk emulsifiers, so the mixture may split and fail to thicken. Slow, continuous whisking lets small oil droplets disperse evenly and form a stable emulsion.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Tarragonthe original
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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