Name: Sauce Mayonnaise
Ingredients: 1 egg yolk (or 2 in summer); ¼ teaspoon white pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 cup olive oil (or more); Vinegar (to taste); Lemon juice (optional, for acidity)

Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sauce Mayonnaise

Ingredients

1 egg yolk (or 2 in summer)
¼ teaspoon white pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
1 cup olive oil (or more)
Vinegar (to taste)
Lemon juice (optional, for acidity)

Directions

Prepare

Chill the egg yolk and olive oil in the refrigerator beforehand.
Place a bowl on cracked ice in a pan if making in summer.
Separate the egg yolk from the white and place the yolk in the bowl.
Remove any germs from the yolk and add white pepper and salt.
Mix gently to combine the ingredients.

Make the mayonnaise

Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring steadily in one direction.
Continue adding oil until you have used about 1 cup.
If the mixture starts to 'crack', add a few drops of vinegar and mix until smooth before resuming with the oil.
After the mayonnaise is made, you can add lemon juice for acidity if desired.
Serve very cold with salads.

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.

Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,658 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,154 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 yolk: Emulsifies the oil and water so the oil stays suspended as droplets, giving a thick sauce.
Olive oil: Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness, fat and body as it emulsifies.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that helps stabilise the emulsion and restore it when it begins to crack.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity and brightness to the finished mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added drop by drop while whisking steadily so the yolk can emulsify it. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the mixture separates or cracks.

“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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Sauce Mayonnaise