Truffle Aioli (Truffle Mayo)

Truffle aioli, or truffle mayo, makes a delicious dip for shellfish or vegetables. Just include truffle oil and garlic when whisking together homemade mayo!

It’s the tail end of truffle season here in Paris. Fancy restaurants have five-course truffle tasting menus, and occasionally you can find black truffles themselves in the markets—for an obscene amount of money, of course. Raw truffles are fantastic thinly shaved over risotto or a creamy pasta dish for a special occasion dinner. A more reasonably priced option for your truffle fix though is truffle oil, which gives you that same earthy, seductive flavor in a shelf-stable form. I love a bit of truffle oil drizzled over soft-scrambled eggs or tossed with steamed green beans, but using it to make your own Truffle Aioli is a bit of decadence we all deserve right now. 

Jump to:

• Why Make This Recipe
• Watch the Truffle Aioli (Truffle Mayo) Video
• 🥗 Ingredients
• 🥣 Step-by-Step Instructions
• 🧐 Recipe FAQs
• 👩‍🍳 Expert Tips
• Top Uses for Truffle Aioli
• What Are Truffles?
• Other Aioli Recipes
• 📖 Recipe Card
• More About Molly
• Comments

Why Make This Recipe

• Surprisingly easy to make! This recipe combines my technique for homemade mayo with truffle oil flavoring. Though I love my Hellman’s for most regular uses, every now and then I like to make my own mayonnaise from scratch. All you need is a whisk!
• Delicious condiment for so many different foods. Use truffle mayonnaise as a dip with chilled shellfish or steamed vegetables, or serve it as a topping for a bouillabaisse or other fish stew. (Or, just smear some on a baguette slice and stuff in your mouth, as I did as soon as I finished whisking.) 

Watch the Truffle Aioli (Truffle Mayo) Video

🥗 Ingredients

• Vegetable Oil: Using vegetable oil to make mayonnaise gives you the most mild flavor. Alternatively, you could use grapeseed oil or sunflower oil. If you wanted to add in some olive oil flavor, I would recommend using half olive oil and half vegetable oil so that the olive oil flavor does not overshadow the truffle oil.
• Truffle Oil: Many truffle oils are artificially flavored, and not as delicious as oil made from real truffles. If you’re in Paris, I found high-quality truffle oil at G. Detou. In the States, you can usually find black truffle oil and white truffle oil at specialty grocery stores, and on Amazon (such as this white truffle oil). Oliviers and Co. also sells high-quality truffle oils and salts, and they ship within the United States.
• Egg: This recipe does include a raw egg yolk, so look for pasteurized eggs if this is a concern for you.

🥣 Step-by-Step Instructions

Whisk together 1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, and ¼ teaspoon salt in a small-medium bowl. I like to use a glass bowl so you can really see what is happening.

In a measuring cup with a spout, combine 1 tablespoon truffle oil and ¾ cup neutral oil. Very slowly, begin to drip the oil into the bowl with the egg mixture, whisking constantly and vigorously. You are making an emulsion, and emulsions are very tricky. At the beginning, you must literally add the oil drop by drop, making sure it is incorporated before adding more.

The mixture will thicken and lighten little by little at first, and then faster and faster.

Once you have added about ¼ cup of the oil, you can speed up the rate at which you are adding the oil. Continue to whisk constantly, taking a break if your arm tires. If your bowl is moving around a lot, try putting a damp kitchen towel under it.

After about ½ cup has been added, you can speed up even more until all the oil is incorporated.

If the aioli is too thick, add a teaspoon of water at a time to loosen it up to what you desire. Whisk in a clove of minced garlic and let sit for at least 10 minutes, to allow the flavors to meld. 

🧐 Recipe FAQs

👩‍🍳 Expert Tips

Want an easier way to make truffle aioli? If you avoid eating raw egg yolks or just really don’t want to make your own mayonnaise, you can also make truffle aioli by whisking ¾ to 1 cup of mayonnaise with a tablespoon of truffle oil, a minced garlic clove, and a bit of lemon juice. You may find the texture to be a little looser than you prefer if you use this method, but it still works! 

What about using a food processor to make aioli? If you are already a home mayonnaise-maker and are on Team Food Processor/Blender/Immersion blender, I salute you. You can absolutely use that technique with this recipe and just add in the truffle oil. Me, I seem to have about a 50% success rate with using a machine to make mayonnaise. As a result of throwing out several machine-made attempts amid a stream of impolite words, I am now 100% Team Hand Whisk. Yes, it takes a while. Yes, your arm will get tired of whisking. But it is much much less easier to mess up as you can see exactly what you are doing.

Top Uses for Truffle Aioli

Use truffle aioli instead of mayo to make a next-level chicken salad or egg salad dish. May I suggest this Egg Salad with Bacon recipe? Or, use it as a spread on your sandwich du jour. Blend it into mashed potatoes or serve on top of a potato frittata. Mix it with some dijon mustard and serve as a sauce for crab cakes. Aioli makes a fantastic dip for a crudité platter, or for a bowl of chilled shrimp. Steam artichokes and dip their leaves in aioli to eat.

Or serve with regular french fries or sweet potato fries instead of ketchup. Toss it with steamed green beans or asparagus. In the South of France, where bouillabaisse is popular, a bowl of that seafood stew often comes with baguette toasts slathered with aioli. It’s fantastic, but I do think serving with a truffle aioli instead might just take that dish right over the top. 

What Are Truffles?

Famous French gourmet Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin referred to truffles as “the diamond of the kitchen.” They are a type of fungi that typically grow around the roots of particular types of trees and come in two main varieties: black and white. Truffles require very specific growing conditions and eluded cultivation for many years.

In the 1800s, farmers in southern France began to figure out how to grow black truffles and created truffle farms. Production peaked in the late 1800s before taking a hit from industrialization followed by World War I and then World War II. As the number of truffle farms declined and truffles became more and more scarce, prices rose dramatically.

Truffle production has increased since the 1970s, but truffles are still very much in demand. Since truffles grow underground, truffle hunters often use animals, including truffle pigs and trained dogs, to help sniff them out. Other countries such as the U.K., the U.S., Australia, Sweden, Italy, and more have begun to grow truffles. Here’s to more availability and lower prices in the future!

Other Aioli Recipes

Now that you know how to make homemade aioli, it's time to try your hand at other flavors. Here are some of my favorites:

If you try this truffle mayo recipe, I would love to hear from you! Leave a comment below—I read them all, and your feedback is invaluable to me.

And please follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook or subscribe to my newsletter. I'd love to inspire you with more delicious, healthy, and seasonal recipes!

Instagram Users: Now that you've made this truffle aioli, tag me @vanillabeancuisine or #vanillabeancuisine because I'd love to see your results!