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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, shallot, and oil, finished with tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the hard-boiled egg yolks, salt, mustard powder, shallot, and white pepper.

  2. Mash these ingredients together with the back of a spoon.

  3. Gradually add oil while mixing until you achieve a moist paste.

  4. Incorporate the raw egg yolks one at a time, continuing to add oil until the sauce reaches your desired consistency.

  5. Finish by adding tarragon vinegar to taste.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the sauce, giving it a thick, creamy structure.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form a smooth base paste that helps hold the oil evenly during emulsifying.
Oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in the yolks, makes the sauce rich and thick.
Mustard powder
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, savory bite.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the egg yolk's lecithin. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and runny.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, shallot, 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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