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A Swiss Mayonnaise

A Swiss mayonnaise is a sauce made from butter, egg yolks, salad oil, salt, vinegar, 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. Slowly incorporate the salad oil until fully blended.

  4. Add salt and vinegar to taste for acidity.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Carve the boiled fowls neatly and arrange the inferior parts on a large plate.

  2. Spread a thick layer of sauce over the fowl parts.

  3. Layer more joints symmetrically over the first layer with more sauce.

  4. Build a pyramid shape with the fowl and decorate with egg whites and halved lettuce hearts.

  5. Place boiled eggs around the base, cutting a small slice from the large end of each.

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

Butter
Creamed to form the rich, smooth body of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the fat to thicken the sauce and give it a smooth texture.
Salad oil
Adds fat that lengthens the emulsion, making the sauce richer and thicker.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and butter slowly. Egg yolks can only hold fat in a stable emulsion if it is added gradually while beating. Adding it too fast causes the sauce to separate and turn oily rather than smooth and thick.

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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