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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, vinegar, pepper, salt, and salad oil.

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

Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pass the raw and hard-boiled egg yolks through a wire sieve into a bowl.

  2. Add vinegar, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Mix together in a bowl or mortar.

Emulsify

  1. Slowly add the finest salad oil drop by drop, mixing continuously.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their lecithin emulsifies the oil into droplets, forming a stable, thick sauce.
Finest salad oil
Supplies the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich body and smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil added too fast cannot be dispersed into the yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce stays runny and separated. Slow addition with constant mixing lets each droplet get coated by yolk proteins and lecithin, building a stable emulsion.

“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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