Skip to main content
Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from mustard, egg yolk, oil, and vinegar.

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

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a two-quart bowl, mix the mustard, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Beat in the yolk of the raw egg.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil while beating briskly.

  4. Continue beating until the mixture becomes a thick batter.

  5. Flavor with additional vinegar or fresh lemon juice to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Mustard + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and water in the vinegar, holding the sauce together and making it thick.
Pure olive oil
Forms the fat base that, dispersed in droplets, gives the mayonnaise its body and richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Ground mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help bind the oil and liquid together into a stable sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually while beating. Oil must be dispersed in tiny droplets so the egg yolk can coat them. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk and the emulsion breaks, leaving the sauce oily and runny.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, olive. 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 →

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes