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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A homemade mayonnaise sauce made with egg yolk, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and optional eschalot and parsley.

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

Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a basin, combine the egg yolk, tarragon vinegar, vinegar, salt, and pepper, then mix well with a wooden spoon.

  2. Cover the oil bottle's top with your thumb and add the oil drop by drop, mixing thoroughly after each addition.

  3. After about 40-50 drops, add the oil by the teaspoon until you have used about ½ cup.

Finish and season

  1. Taste and adjust seasoning with more vinegar, salt, or pepper as needed.

  2. For added flavor, rub the mixing basin with eschalot or garlic, and consider adding minced eschalot and parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and vinegar, so the sauce thickens instead of separating.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it its rich, thick body as it is emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly at the start. The first oil must be dispersed one drop at a time while mixing constantly. If the oil goes in too fast, the yolk cannot hold the droplets and the emulsion breaks, leaving the sauce oily and thin.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

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