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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made by emulsifying mustard, salt, vinegar, egg yolk, and oil.

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

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a two-quart bowl, mix the mustard, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Beat in the yolk of the raw egg.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil while beating briskly until the mixture thickens.

Finish and store

  1. Flavor with additional vinegar or lemon juice as desired.

  2. Store covered in a cold place for up to weeks.

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 + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Mustard + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil into the vinegar, letting the sauce thicken and hold together.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives mayonnaise its rich, thick body.
Ground mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion so the oil and water-based ingredients stay combined.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and sharpens the flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually add the olive oil while beating briskly. Adding oil too fast overwhelms the egg yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce stays runny instead of thickening. Slow addition with constant beating lets tiny oil droplets get coated and suspended in the yolk.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, olive. 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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