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Sauce

Sauce Mayonnaise

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sauce Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and mustard.

  2. Slowly add the salad oil while stirring constantly until the mixture thickens enough to turn the bowl upside down without spilling.

  3. Add the vinegar, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt. Stir briskly until the sauce is light and well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve on lobster, lettuce, or fish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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
Emulsify the oil and water, giving the sauce its thick, creamy structure.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives mayonnaise its richness and body.
Prepared mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion so the oil stays suspended in the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the salad oil. Oil must be added slowly while stirring constantly so it disperses into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, and the emulsion breaks into a loose, oily mixture that will not thicken.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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