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Mayonnaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Tarragon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Place the egg yolks in a bowl and add a pinch of salt.

  2. Whisk the yolks quickly while adding the oil drop by drop until the sauce thickens to the consistency of butter.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and season with salt and pepper.

Fix and adjust

  1. If the sauce curdles, transfer a yolk to a new bowl and slowly add the curdled sauce to it to smooth it out.

  2. For a thicker consistency, mix in 1 tablespoon of warm water.

  3. If using for coating cold dishes, mix in ½ cup of cold aspic jelly before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Egg + tarragontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Emulsify the oil and water into a thick, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving richness and body once emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop while whisking. Oil must be dispersed into the yolk in tiny droplets so the emulsion forms. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the sauce breaks or curdles.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Tarragonthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper. 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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