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Tarragon Mayonnaise Sauce

A sauce made with egg yolks, pepper, salt, salad oil, tarragon vinegar, lemon juice, and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tarragon Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a round bowl, combine the egg yolks, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Stir with a wooden spoon while gradually adding the salad oil.

  3. Add the tarragon vinegar, lemon juice, and chili vinegar, mixing well.

  4. Adjust flavors with other vinegars if desired.

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. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 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 yolks
Emulsify the oil into the mixture, giving the mayonnaise its thick, creamy structure.
Salad oil
Forms the body of the sauce as tiny droplets suspended in the egg yolk mixture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and sharp herbal flavor that balances the richness of the oil.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavor of the rich emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the salad oil gradually. Oil added too quickly cannot be absorbed by the egg yolk lecithin, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns greasy and runny. Adding it slowly while stirring lets each droplet be surrounded and suspended, producing a stable, thick mayonnaise.

“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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