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Mayonnaise, a Sauce or Salad-Dressing for Cold Chicken, Meat, and Other Cold Dishes

A homemade mayonnaise sauce made with egg yolks, salad oil, vinegar, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,154 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise, a Sauce or Salad-Dressing for Cold Chicken, Meat, and Other Cold Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil while whisking continuously until emulsified.

  3. Stir in the vinegar, salt, and white pepper.

  4. Add the white stock and cream, mixing until well combined.

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.

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. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. White pepper + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Lecithin in the yolks helps hold the oil and water together as a stable emulsion.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives it its rich, thick body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Cream
Adds smoothness and mild richness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the salad oil. Oil must be added slowly while whisking so it breaks into fine droplets that the egg yolk can coat and suspend. Adding it too fast can overwhelm the yolk, and the emulsion breaks into a runny, separated sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. White pepperthe original

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