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Sauce

Sauce Mayonnaise

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a quart bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir well, then gradually add 1 teaspoon of salad oil, mixing until it resembles cream.

  3. Slowly add ½ cup of salad oil while stirring until fully incorporated.

  4. Mix in 2 tablespoons of sharp vinegar and 1 tablespoon of cold water.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Emulsify the oil into the mixture and give the mayonnaise its body and richness.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, dispersed into tiny droplets that give it a thick, creamy texture.
Sharp vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while stirring. Oil must be dispersed into tiny droplets among the egg yolk. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifiers, so the mixture splits and fails to thicken.

“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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