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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from eggs, oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, and salt.

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

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then cool them.

  2. Remove the yolks and mash them with a spoon.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Add salt, mustard, sugar, and the raw egg yolks, and stir until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring.

  3. Mix in the tarragon vinegar and common vinegar until the mixture resembles thick cream.

Chill

  1. Let it stand in a cold place for 1 hour before using.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsifiers that bind the oil and vinegar into a smooth, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich body and thick texture.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavour.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour that brightens the rich oil and yolks.
Common vinegar
Adds acidity that balances richness and sharpens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring. Oil must be dispersed into the yolk mixture in tiny droplets so the egg proteins can coat them. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce thin and oily instead of thick.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Tarragonthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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