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Mayonnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Mayonnaise Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, break the egg yolks and beat them lightly.

  2. Gradually add the mustard, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Slowly stir in the olive oil a few drops at a time until the sauce thickens.

  4. Once half the oil is added, incorporate the lemon juice gradually with the remaining oil.

  5. Finally, mix in the vinegar.

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

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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
Emulsifiers that hold the oil and water-based ingredients together as a thick sauce.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed in droplets, gives mayonnaise its rich body.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the sauce is less likely to split.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added a few drops at a time at first so each droplet is surrounded by egg yolk. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks, and the emulsion breaks into a loose, oily liquid.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, olive, lemon, 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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