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Sauce

A Swiss Mayonnaise

A Swiss mayonnaise is a creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, vinegar, oil, and seasonings.

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 mix in the salad oil until fully incorporated.

  4. Add salt and vinegar to taste for acidity.

Assemble and decorate

  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 pieces.

  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 hard-boiled eggs around the base.

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 butter gives the sauce its rich body and smooth, spreadable texture.
Egg yolks
Yolks emulsify with the butter and oil, binding the sauce and giving it a smooth, thick texture.
Salad oil
Oil adds fat and body, helping the emulsion stay smooth and thick.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolk sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the butter to the pounded yolks. Adding fat too quickly to yolks can break the mixture, so it will not come together smooth. Adding it slowly lets the yolks emulsify the butter into a stable, smooth sauce.

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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