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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

Mayonnaise is a cold sauce made from egg yolks, oil, mustard, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Mustard and tarragon 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

Make the emulsion

  1. Place the egg yolks in a clean, cold bowl.

  2. Add the salt and stir with a wooden spoon in a cool place or on ice.

  3. Slowly add the salad oil while stirring for about 15 minutes until the mixture resembles thick cream.

Finish and store

  1. Finally, mix in the mustard, pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Store in a very cool place until needed.

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

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

  4. Egg + tarragontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Act as the emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together as a thick sauce.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that gives mayonnaise its rich body when whisked into the yolks.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Mustard
Contains natural emulsifiers that help keep the oil and yolk mixture from separating.

The step that matters

Adding the salad oil slowly. Oil must be added a little at a time while stirring so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the egg yolk. Adding it too fast causes the emulsion to break and the mixture to separate into oily liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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