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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, salt, oil, vinegar, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. Pass the raw and hard-boiled egg yolks through a wire sieve into a bowl.

  2. Add the mixed mustard and coarse sea salt, and mix well.

  3. Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop, stirring with a wooden spoon until thick.

Finish and flavour

  1. Once thick, add the chili or tarragon vinegar and incorporate more oil until desired consistency is reached.

  2. For fish, mix in the anchovy sauce, chopped capers, and chives.

  3. For salad, mix in the chopped parsley, chives, and tarragon.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Lecithin in the yolks emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together as a thick emulsion.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives mayonnaise its thick, rich body.
Mixed mustard
Its particles help stabilise the emulsion and add sharpness.
Chili or tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly, drop by drop, at the start. Oil must be dispersed into the yolk one drop at a time so the emulsion forms. Adding it too fast breaks the mixture, leaving it runny and separated.

“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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