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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and chives.

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

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard 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

  1. Place the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and a little pepper.

  3. Stir well with a wooden spoon, adding the oil drop by drop until thick.

  4. Once thick as butter, mix in the tarragon vinegar, mustard, and chopped chives.

  5. Ensure the sauce is thick before serving.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 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
Emulsify the oil into the sauce, giving it a thick, creamy structure.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in the yolks, thickens the sauce into mayonnaise.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the sauce holds together.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil added too quickly cannot be absorbed by the yolks and the emulsion breaks, leaving a runny, separated sauce. Slow addition lets the yolk lecithin surround tiny oil droplets, building thickness gradually.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tarragon, vinegar, mustard, 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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