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Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolk, mustard, oil, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a basin, combine the egg yolk, English mustard, French mustard, salt, white pepper, and red pepper.

  2. Using a wooden spoon, slowly mix in the salad oil drop by drop until the mixture thickens to the consistency of butter.

  3. Add the tarragon vinegar, chili vinegar, and lemon juice, mixing well. Ensure the sauce remains thick.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 in the vinegar, giving the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness and a smooth, thick texture when emulsified.
English mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour that cuts through the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil added too quickly cannot be absorbed by the egg yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns thin and greasy. Slow addition lets the yolk coat each droplet and keep the sauce thick.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, lemon. 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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