Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sauce Mayonnaise
Ingredients
Directions
In a large bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Stir the mixture well until combined.
Slowly add the salad oil, stirring continuously until the sauce thickens and resembles cream.
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.
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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
- Lecithin in the yolks acts as an emulsifier, holding oil and water together so the sauce stays smooth.
- Salad oil
- Supplies the fat that, dispersed into tiny droplets, thickens the sauce into a rich, creamy texture.
The step that matters
Slowly add the salad oil. Oil must be added in a thin, slow stream while stirring so the yolk emulsifier can coat each droplet. Adding it too quickly overwhelms the yolk, and the sauce breaks and stays runny instead of thickening.
“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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