Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is a very thick, creamy sauce served at room temperature or chilled. It can be used as a sauce, a dressing, and or a condiment.

It is made from oil and raw egg with something acidic added such as vinegar or lemon. The oil and the vinegar would normally separate. However, lecithin in the egg yolk coats the drops of oil, and the egg yolks emulsify, binding the oil and the vinegar together. The mixture is seasoned with spices, salt and sugar.

Mayonnaise is now usually bought instead of made. While purists sniff at the idea of bottled Mayonnaise, which was introduced in the second decade of the 1900s, had they been housewives back then in a kitchen with no conveniences, they'd have welcomed ready-made Mayonnaise with open arms, too. While Foodies continue decade after decade to wax lyrical about proper homemade Mayonnaise, the fact is that people are so accustomed now to commercial Mayonnaise that the homemade doesn't taste right to them.

In the Southern US, people are passionate about the brand called "Blue Plate Mayonnaise".

Hellman's
Hellman's Mayonnaise as made in America is different from the Hellman's Mayonnaise made in Canada.

In America, the ingredients listed (as of 2002) are: Soybean Oil, Whole Eggs and Egg Yolks, Water, Vinegar, Salt, Sugar, Lemon Juice, Natural Flavors, Calcium Disodium Edta Used To Protect Quality.

In Canada, the ingredients (as of 2002) are: Vegetable Oil, Water, Liquid Whole Egg, White Vinegar, Liquid Egg Yolk, Salt, Sugar, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Spices, Calcium Disodium Edta.

People used to the American brand of Hellman's tend not to like the Canadian version.

In America, Hellman's is called and sold as "Best Foods" brand west of the Rockies, but it is the same mayonnaise.

Cooking Tips
If you are concerned about making homemade Mayonnaise with raw eggs, you can use a pasteurized egg substitute. Or combine the egg yolks with some water and lemon juice, and heat gently to 150 (65 C) degrees, then cool a bit and proceed with the recipe.

Using verjuice instead of lemon juice or vinegar in your mayonnaise recipes can give a subtler taste.

Nutrition
If you are thinking of making some kind of salad that is going to sit out for a while, say at a church picnic or a buffet, you may wish to consider using a boiled dressing, or its modern equivalents such as Salad Cream or Miracle Whip, instead of Mayonnaise, because they might be somewhat safer unrefrigerated for a while. If you can't bring yourself to do that, then commercial bottled Mayonnaise might be safer than homemade. There might be times when purism in food standards makes you feel good about yourself: having dispatched your nearest and dearest to hospital beds with salmonella because of your standards might not be one of those times.

History
The origins of Mayonnaise are obscure and debated - on a good day, they go back to Rome.

Invented in France in 1756 to commemorate the capture from the English of St Philip's in Mahón, the capital of the island of Minorca off Spain.
One of the two commanders on the French side was Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (who, though this may be just spurious gossip, was known to throw nude dinner parties). His chef invented the sauce there, calling it "sauce mahonnaise."
Same as above, but the chef invented the sauce out of what was to hand at a place where there had just been a siege, rather than necessarily trying to create a special dish to commemorate a victory.
The Duke of Richelieu landed. They were foraging for food. A local farmer on the island who wanted to impress him, but who had only bread, a few eggs, and oil, made up for the Duke a sauce that had been made on the island for many generations: olive egg with egg yolk and a squirt of lemon juice from the trees that grew there. The Duke liked the sauce, and had his chef improve on it; it was further improved by cooks back in Paris.
More likely the sauce had been made for some time in Spain, and was picked up by the chef.

There are at least 10 other versions and variations trying to explain its origin.

Richard Hellman (1876 to 1971)
Richard Hellman had been a salesman in Germany, and somehow acquired extensive knowledge of Mayonnaise production in his hometown of Vetschau, Spreewald, in Germany. He was later to make many donations to Vetschau.

Hellman arrived in New York from Germany in 1903. In New York, he met a woman named Nina, the daughter of a delicatessen owner. In 1905, at the age of 29, he opened his own deli in New York City. Nina, his wife by then, made the Mayonnaise that he used in the deli in salads and on sandwiches. The Mayonnaise became popular in its own right, so he started selling it on its own by the scoop. In 1912, at the age of 36, Richard built a factory to start selling it in glass jars. Nina made two versions of Mayonnaise, and to distinguish them, he placed a blue ribbon on the label of one version (the blue label is still on the label today.)

Richard Hellman lived to be 94, passing away in February 1971 in New York City. He and his family had a summer home built in the Catskills in the late 1920s, which is now called Onteora Mountain House.

Hellman's was first sold in the UK in the 1960s. They had to bring the British around to the idea of Mayonnaise. At the time, Salad Cream still reigned supreme in Britain as a British food. Mayonnaise was still a little bit suspicious, being a French food made by Yanks.

As of 2004, Hellman's has 66% of the Mayonnaise market in the UK.

Literature & Lore
The besieged British at Mahón in 1756 were holding on valiantly, but they needed reinforcements and supplies. It was the job of Vice Admiral John Byng (1704 - 57). Byng tried, didn't succeed, and pulled his fleet away to Gibraltar. The French then overtook Mahón. Though the British Admiralty had earlier neglected Mahón (and thus the desperate need of reinforcements), public opinion in Britain then forced them to take it quite seriously, and Byng was found guilty of neglect of duty. Notwithstanding that even the Duc du Richelieu and Voltaire wrote letters in defence of Byng, Byng was executed by a firing squad at Portsmouth Harbour. It's owing to this that in Chapter 23 of Candide, set in Portsmouth, that Voltaire comes up with this famous line "pour encourager les autres".

"Dans ce pay-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres." (In this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others.) -- Candide, Chapter 23, Voltaire.

Language Notes
There are almost as many versions of where the word "Mayonnaise" comes from as there are possible histories. One version holds that the word comes from the French word to handle, which is "manier". Another plumps in favour of it coming from an old French word for egg yolk, which was "moyeu" or "moyen". Another version says that it was named after the Duc de Mayenne (a place in France). Originally, though, it does appear to have been called "sauce mahonnaise". There are two versions of how the "h" became a "y". One accredits it to a printing error in a cookbook (unnamed, of course). The other says that the French, who have never been able to say the letter "h", simply changed it to a "y".

Also called: Mayonnaise (French) Mayonnaise (German) Maionese (Italian) Mayonesa (Spanish)