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Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made with mustard powder, salt, pepper, egg yolks, oil, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, combine mustard powder, salt, and mignonette pepper, then crush together with the back of a spoon.

  2. Gradually add a little oil, mixing to form a paste.

  3. Beat in the yolks of the eggs one at a time, continuing to add oil until the sauce is thick and creamy.

  4. Add tarragon vinegar and mix until well combined.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce into a serving dish.

  2. Chill in the refrigerator if made in warm weather.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water into a thick, stable sauce.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and body.
Mustard powder
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp flavour.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Adding oil too fast before the yolks have emulsified can cause the sauce to split. Slow, steady addition lets the lecithin in the yolk bind the oil into fine droplets, producing a thick, creamy result.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, 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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