Why it works: Egg and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,210 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mayonnaise Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Beat the raw and hard-boiled egg yolks through a fine sieve into a bowl.
Add the mustard and salt, and mix well.
Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop, mixing continuously until emulsified.
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.
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Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,210 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Raw egg yolk
- Lecithin in the yolk emulsifies the oil and water so the sauce stays smooth and thick.
- Hard-boiled egg yolk
- Adds body and a smoother, richer texture while helping hold the oil evenly dispersed.
- Mixed mustard
- Its natural emulsifiers help stabilise the oil droplets and add sharp flavour.
- Salad oil
- Supplies the fat that, dispersed into the yolks, forms the thick body of the sauce.
The step that matters
Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets around the egg yolk emulsifiers. Adding it too fast overwhelms them, so the mixture separates and fails to thicken.
“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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