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Sauce

Whisked Mayonnaise

A mayonnaise-based sauce whisked with melted jelly, tarragon vinegar, and horseradish until frothy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 73 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Whisked Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a copper basin or bowl, combine melted jelly, mayonnaise, tarragon vinegar, and horseradish.

  2. Place the bowl on ice and whisk gently until frothy.

  3. Stop whisking as soon as the sauce begins to solidify; it should remain almost fluid for mixing.

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 + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Melted jelly
Sets as it cools, giving the sauce body and a light, firm structure.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and emulsified richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and sharp aroma that cut through the richness of the fat.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent heat and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stop whisking as soon as the sauce begins to solidify. The jelly sets as it cools, so overwhipping past the first signs of setting can make the sauce stiff and grainy instead of light and fluid for mixing. Whisk gently and stop early to keep it airy and spreadable.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar. 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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