Garde Manger · Sauce
Mayonnaise by Hand, and the Rescue
- Intermediate
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 2 egg yolks, about 36 g, at 20C (68F)
- 10 g Dijon mustard
- 10 g white wine vinegar
- 15 g water, plus more to let the sauce down
- 300 g neutral oil such as grapeseed, 150 g per yolk
- 3 g fine salt
- 5 g lemon juice, to finish
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: egg · mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whisk the yolks, mustard, salt and vinegar in a bowl seated on a damp cloth for 30 seconds, until the base is smooth, glossy and pale enough to show clean whisk tracks.
- Add the oil drop by drop for the first 50 g, until the base thickens and turns matte; the emulsion has to be seeded before it can be fed.
- Pour the rest in a slow thread, whisking each addition out before the next, until the mayonnaise stands in a soft peak and a spoon drawn through leaves a channel that does not close.
- Whenever it climbs the whisk and starts to look stiff and greasy, let it down with 5 g of water at a time until it slackens back to a glossy ribbon, then carry on with the oil.
- To rescue a split batch, put 15 g of water or a fresh yolk in a clean bowl, whisk in one spoonful of the broken sauce until it thickens and grips, then feed the remainder back in a thread.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Building an emulsion 40 recipes
- It visibly thickens as the fat goes in, heavier and more opaque than either part was alone, which is the emulsion announcing itself.
- At no point is there a pool of free fat sitting ahead of the work: fat went in no faster than it disappeared into the body.
- Glossy and homogeneous, with no slick floating on top and no visible droplets standing apart in it.
- It clings: coating what it is put on and holding a line, rather than running off and splitting into a puddle at the plate’s edge.
- It survives standing: minutes later there is no ring of weeping liquid underneath and no film of fat breaking out on the surface.
Where it goes wrong The fat went in faster than the shear could break it up, or the temperature drifted out of the range the method needs: it breaks into grease over a thin liquid, and whisking the broken thing harder does nothing. The rescue is a fresh base, with the broken sauce worked into it slowly, as if it were the fat.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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