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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, salad oil, vinegar, mustard, and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard 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 base

  1. Drain the egg yolks well from the whites and place them in a small bowl.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the sauce

  1. Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring with a wooden spoon.

  2. As the sauce thickens, you can add the oil more quickly, being careful not to curdle it.

  3. Season with the vinegars and mustard, then serve.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsifier that holds the oil and water in the sauce together, giving it a thick, smooth body.
Salad oil
Fat that forms the bulk of the sauce, giving richness and a creamy texture when emulsified.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added slowly at first so the yolk can emulsify it into tiny droplets. Adding too much oil too early overwhelms the yolk, and the sauce breaks or curdles instead of thickening.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, tarragon, 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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