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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A sauce made from raw egg yolks, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a basin, stir the yolks of the eggs well.

  2. Add salt, mustard, and Neapolitan pepper.

  3. Mix in olive oil drop by drop until thick like butter.

  4. Stir in tarragon vinegar, chervil, chili, garlic, and lemon juice.

  5. Keep the sauce cool to maintain its thickness.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mustard + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 into the sauce and thicken it as they bind with the fat.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and a thick, buttery body.
French mustard
Helps hold the oil and egg emulsion together so it stays smooth.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil drop by drop. Oil added too quickly cannot be dispersed into the egg yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce stays runny or separates. Slow addition lets tiny oil droplets get coated by the yolk proteins, which is what makes the sauce thick.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, olive, tarragon, vinegar, chervil. 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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