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Mayonnaise Sauce

A cold sauce made from egg yolks, oil, mustard, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Place 2 egg yolks in a bowl set over a shallow pan of pounded ice.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon salt, a pinch of white pepper, and ½ teaspoon mustard, then mix well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Slowly pour in 1 pint of salad oil, adding a few drops of tarragon vinegar from time to time.

Finish the sauce

  1. Once the sauce is well mixed, add the chopped gherkins, capers, and parsley.

  2. If the sauce is too stiff, add a few drops of lemon juice or more vinegar.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and water-based vinegar into a thick, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and body as it emulsifies.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and vinegar together in a stable emulsion.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness, and helps thin the sauce as it is added.
Gherkins
Add tangy, acidic crunch and flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the oil. Oil must be added slowly so each drop emulsifies into the yolk mixture. Adding it too fast can overwhelm the yolks, so the sauce separates and fails to thicken.

“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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