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Mayonnaise Sauce

A simple mayonnaise sauce made from egg yolk, mustard, salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Rub the plate with onion or garlic before making the sauce.

  2. Do not include onion or garlic in the sauce.

  3. In hot weather, keep the ingredients on ice to ensure the sauce emulsifies properly.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the egg yolk, mustard, salt, and pepper in a soup plate and mix well with a fork.

  2. Slowly add the oil drop by drop while continuously mixing until the desired quantity of sauce is reached.

  3. Stir in a few drops of Tarragon or Maille vinegar at the end.

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. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and water-free fat into a stable, thick sauce.
Prepared mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharpness to the sauce.
Oil
Forms the body of the sauce as tiny droplets dispersed through the yolk.
Tarragon or maille vinegar
Adds acidity and aroma, brightening the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added drop by drop while whisking so each droplet is coated by yolk and dispersed. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the emulsion breaks into a greasy, separated liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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