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Mayonnaise Sauce

A simple mayonnaise sauce made with egg yolk, salt, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, 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

  1. Place the egg yolk in a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until light.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt and dry mustard, and beat for another minute.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop until the mixture thickens.

  4. Add a few drops of vinegar and lemon juice, continuing to mix.

  5. Repeat until the egg has absorbed about 1 cup of oil.

  6. Finish by adding a pinch of cayenne pepper.

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

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

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 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 yolk
Emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together as a thick, stable mixture.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness and body once emulsified.
Dry mustard
Acts as a secondary emulsifier, helping the oil and egg stay blended.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps thin the emulsion as it thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added drop by drop at first so the egg yolk can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce runny and separated.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, 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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