Oeufs Mayonnaise (French Boiled Eggs With Homemade Mayonnaise)

A moment after I'd arranged the boiled egg halves on a plate and topped them with dollops of mayonnaise, Megan asked me if I'd pasteurized them first. She was making a humorous nod to her extensive egg pasteurization article we'd worked on together (go read it if you haven't!), but all I could do was awkwardly stand there in the test kitchen and stare at the plate while trying to figure out how to say, "Megan, these eggs are boiled, not raw" without sounding like an asshole. Then it clicked—she was talking about the raw egg in the mayo!

When you're dealing with a recipe as simple as oeufs mayo—literally just boiled eggs with mayonnaise—it can be hard to come up with much to say about it. But I think my small moment of confusion speaks to one of the main things that makes this dish special, and it's that you're serving eggs with eggs. More specifically, it's the combination of textures and flavors from the egg in two forms that is so enjoyable. It becomes easy to see why such a basic recipe, to the extent pairing boiled eggs with mayo can even be called a recipe, has become a tried-and-true French bistro classic.

Another wonderful thing about a dish this simple is it lets us focus on the finer details of the two components, because not all boiled eggs and mayonnaises are the same. There's no one "right" way to make this, assuming your eggs are indeed boiled and your mayo isn't broken, but different ways of preparing each will alter the results in important ways.

I have been served this dish with good ol' hard-boiled eggs and plops of mayo straight from the jar. It's tasty enough, and it's as easy as it gets, so bonus points for that. My own rendition takes just a tad more time and care, but I think the results justify it (and to be clear, my version still only takes a few minutes to whip together, so it's still quick and easy).

For the eggs, I prefer ones that are boiled just shy of hard. Instead of a fully set and slightly chalky yolk, I want one with a yolk that's mostly firm but still creamy, with a touch of jamminess in the center. Getting this result is as easy as setting a timer when the eggs go into the pot: when using Kenji's egg boiling method, that's about nine minutes for the jammy yolks I want, or closer to 11 minutes for fully cooked yolks, if you prefer them that way.

As soon as they're done cooking, they should go straight into an ice bath to rapidly chill and stop any residual cooking.

For the mayo, I'd strongly recommend hand-whisking it. I know, that makes some people groan, but it's really not hard at all. In fact, I find it easier than almost any other method because it saves me the hassle of having to get out an electric appliance and wash its parts later. But no matter if you agree with me or not about the ease of hand-whisking, the approach offers another advantage, which I've written about before: Hand-whisked mayo has a silkier, more sauce-like texture that I perceived as more refined and delicate, and I think that works better here than a thick and creamy motor-blended mayo.

I also like using at least some olive oil in this mayo for the flavor it brings. Whisking it by hand is an insurance policy against ending up with a mayo that's unpleasantly bitter. I've written about this phenomenon too (at length), and while power-blending an olive-oil mayo isn't guaranteed to turn it bitter, it is a risk (read the linked article to understand the science).

Even when whisking by hand, you can make oeufs mayo in the time it takes to boil, chill, and shell the eggs. It's as simple as making the mayo while the eggs are boiling, or while they're chilling. Or both, if you're slow—no shame in being slow, it's the best way to eventually be fast.