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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar, pepper, salt, aspic jelly, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Place the egg yolks in a bowl and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring continuously until thickened.

  3. Add the vinegar in the same manner, maintaining the desired consistency.

  4. Incorporate a squeeze of lemon juice to whiten the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, melt the aspic jelly (do not warm) and stir it into the mayonnaise until fully combined.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Egg yolks
Emulsifiers that bind the oil and vinegar into a stable, thick sauce.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed into the yolks, builds the sauce's body and richness.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps set the emulsion's consistency.
Clear aspic jelly
Gelatin-based addition that stiffens the sauce and adds a glossy, set texture.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil added too quickly cannot be absorbed by the egg yolk emulsifiers, so the sauce breaks and separates into a greasy liquid. Slow addition while whisking lets tiny oil droplets stay suspended and the mixture thicken smoothly.

“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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