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A Swiss Mayonnaise

A Swiss mayonnaise is a thick sauce made from butter, egg yolks, salad oil, vinegar, 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 lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Swiss Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

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

  3. Slowly incorporate salad oil until no particles remain visible.

  4. Add a small amount of coarse sea salt and vinegar to taste.

Assemble and decorate

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

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

  3. Arrange the joints symmetrically over the inferior parts 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 + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their fats and lecithin emulsify with the oil, giving the sauce its body and smoothness.
Finest salad oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, supplying richness and a thick, spoonable texture.
Butter
Adds creaminess and a rich dairy flavour to the base before the oil is added.
Good vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Slowly incorporate salad oil. Adding oil too fast to the yolks can break the emulsion, leaving a greasy, separated sauce. Adding it slowly lets the droplets be coated and suspended evenly, so the mayonnaise stays thick and smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, vinegar, 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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