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A Swiss Mayonnaise

A Swiss mayonnaise made with butter, egg yolks, salad oil, vinegar, salt, and optional lemon juice and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Swiss Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Gradually add the butter to the pounded yolks until smooth.

  3. Add salad oil a few drops at a time, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate salt and vinegar to taste for acidity.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Carve the boiled fowls neatly and trim the joints.

  2. Layer the inferior parts on a plate and spread thick sauce over them.

  3. Arrange the joints symmetrically on top, building a pyramid shape.

  4. Decorate with egg whites and halved lettuce hearts around the base, alternating with boiled eggs.

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.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the butter and oil into a stable, smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness, body and a creamy texture to the sauce.
Salad oil
Added slowly, it thickens the emulsion into a firm, spreadable sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and cuts the richness of the sauce.
Boiled fowls
The main dish, carved and served under the thick sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the salad oil. Oil must go in a few drops at a time. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk emulsifier, so the sauce breaks and separates instead of thickening.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, vinegar, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, vinegar, pepper, lettuce. 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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