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Mayonnaise Sauce

A simple homemade mayonnaise made with eggs, oil, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Egg and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the eggs in a bowl and whisk well.

  2. Add the oil drop by drop while stirring until the sauce is very thick.

  3. Slowly add the vinegar and mix until 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. 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

Eggs
Egg yolk lecithin emulsifies the oil and water so the sauce stays thick instead of separating.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, and its fat droplets give mayonnaise its rich, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps balance the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets before the emulsion forms. Adding it too fast overwhelms the egg yolk, so the sauce breaks and separates instead of thickening.

“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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