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Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolk, oil, vinegar, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, add the egg yolk.

  2. Slowly add the oil drop by drop, mixing thoroughly after each addition.

  3. Once a foundation is formed, you can add the remaining oil more quickly.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in vinegar, mustard, and salt to taste.

  2. Serve chilled.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. 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 yolk
Lecithin in the yolk binds oil and water, letting the oil stay suspended as a stable emulsion.
Oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and rich texture of the mayonnaise.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.
Mustard
Its compounds act as an extra emulsifier, helping the mixture hold together.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at first. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets around the yolk before more can be added. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifiers, so the mixture breaks and separates into a greasy liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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