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Sauce

Sauce Mayonnaise

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, salt, olive oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,297 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Sauce Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the egg yolks and salt in a bowl and smooth the yolks with the back of a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the olive oil while continuously stirring.

  3. Add vinegar in a ratio of 1 part vinegar to 5 parts oil, in small amounts, while stirring constantly.

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. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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
Lecithin in the yolks holds the oil and water-based liquids together as an emulsion.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness and a thick, creamy body when emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly while stirring so that small droplets disperse and are coated by yolk lecithin. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, and the mixture breaks into a greasy, separated sauce.

“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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