Flavored Homemade Mayonnaise

It doesn’t occur to most of us to put mayonnaise on a steak, and in fact most people find the idea peculiar at best until they taste the results. The secret is to make your own mayonnaise and flavor it with an abundance of full-flavored ingredients such as herbs, spices, capers, or aromatic vegetables, so that it functions almost like a salsa but is more saucelike.

As with so many classic sauces, there are lots of variations—Escoffier lists 14. Some of them are clearly outdated, but others are useful as jumping-off points for improvisation. I often make classic mayonnaises but double or triple the solid ingredients so the sauce is less rich and its flavor more assertive. You can use a lot of the same ingredients used to flavor the compound butters in the previous section. I sometimes take a Mexican route (unless I’m serving delicate wines) and flavor mayonnaise with cilantro and various chiles—either dried chiles that have been reconstituted, or fresh chiles, charred and peeled—including one of my favorites, chipotles, which are smoked jalapenos. Curry makes a great mayonnaise: Cook 2 tablespoons of curry powder for 30 seconds in oil and stir this mixture into a basic mayo to taste. But a word of warning: curry turns mayonnaise very stiff and may cause it to break, so thin the sauce with 1 or 2 tablespoons of water. Red or white wines, reduced with a little shallot, give mayonnaise a delightful tang (although red wine turns it a weird color).