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Sauce

Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, cream, salt, and pepper.

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

Prepare the base

  1. Beat the egg yolks well in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, mustard, pepper, and vinegar to the yolks and mix.

  3. Pour in the cream last.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the mixture on the stove and stir constantly until it is well scalded.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into a jug and serve with sliced tomatoes, salmon, or lettuce.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the oil and water into a smooth, thick emulsion.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, silkier texture.
White wine vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the sauce.
Mustard
Helps hold the emulsion together and adds a sharp flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture on the stove. Egg yolks can scramble and curdle if they overheat. Stirring constantly spreads the heat evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of turning grainy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, pepper, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, pepper, white wine, vinegar. 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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