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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, placing the yolks in a basin.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, sugar, and cayenne to the yolks and mix well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Slowly add the oil drop by drop, stirring continuously in one direction until the mixture thickens to the consistency of butter.

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. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 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

Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the mayonnaise its thick body.
Salad oil
Forms the fat phase that, dispersed into the yolks, thickens the sauce.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and water phases together.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must go in drop by drop while stirring constantly. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifying capacity, so the droplets cannot be held in suspension and the mixture breaks and separates instead of thickening.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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