Mayonnaise

• 1. Introduction

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  Mayonnaise, casually shortened to mayo, is a pale, creamy sauce that Americans buy to the tune of about US$1.3 billion every year. It is an emulsion, which means oil and a watery liquid have been coaxed into staying mixed. Egg yolk and an acid, either vinegar or lemon juice, hold the oil in place.

  The sauce rides along on sandwiches, hamburgers and French fries. It is also the starting point for tartar sauce, fry sauce, remoulade, salsa golf, ranch dressing and rouille.

  Yet a sauce this ordinary has a past that nobody can settle. Who made the first batch, and on what island or in which kitchen? Why does its name come with so many rival explanations? How does a trickle of oil turn into a stable cream? And why has a spoonful of it sometimes sent a whole crowd of diners to the hospital?

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• 2. Menorca And Before

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  Most of the competing theories about mayonnaise agree on one place: Mahón, a port city on the Spanish island of Menorca. Some authors think the rival claims for south-western France are a later invention, made to credit that region with the sauce.

  Several older preparations could be ancestors. One candidate is the ancient remoulade. Another is aioli. A third clue comes from pharmacists, who had long known how to emulsify egg yolk because they used the trick to prepare ointments and salves.

  Olive oil gives the Spanish theory extra weight, since that oil was produced and consumed mostly in Spain at the time. The same reasoning has been used to place the origin of French fries in Spain.

  The Catalan name all-i-oli, literally 'garlic and oil', appears in the 14th-century Llibre de Sent Soví. Similar emulsified sauces, usually containing garlic, show up in a number of Spanish recipe books from that era onward. The sauce had clearly travelled across the Crown of Aragon, because Juan de Altamiras gave a recipe for it in his celebrated 1745 book Nuevo Arte de Cocina, meaning 'New Art of Cooking'.

  In 1750, a Valencian friar named Francesc Roger Gomila published Art de la Cuina, 'The Art of Cooking', with a sauce he called aioli bo. He never described the method precisely, which hints that everyone on the island already knew it. The dishes he paired it with, and the way he used it as a base, are mostly inconceivable for an ordinary aioli. Six years after his book appeared, the island was about to receive an invading army.

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• 3. One Sauce, Many Names

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  On the 18th of April 1756, the Duke of Richelieu invaded Menorca and took the port of Mahon. One popular theory says his cook adopted the aioli bo sauce and carried it home to France. There it supposedly became famous in the royal court under the name mahonnaise.

  Legends grew around the moment of discovery. In one, the duke asked a local innkeeper in Mahon to cook him dinner during the siege and tasted the sauce there. In another, he invented it himself as a quick garnish.

  The port is called Mahón, or Maó in Catalan, after its founder, Mago Barca. Some writers say the sauce honoured the 3rd Duke of Richelieu's victory over the British in 1756, and a variant says it began as salsa mahonesa in Spanish. The trouble is that the name is attested in writing only several decades after the battle, and that Spanish spelling turns up later still.

  Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière was a lawyer by training who became famous under Napoleon for a sensual and very public gastronomic lifestyle. He rejected mayonnaise because the word "is not French". He rejected mahonnaise because Mahón "is not known for good food". He preferred bayonnaise, after the city of Bayonne, which in his words "has many innovative gourmands and... produces the best hams in Europe." Bayonne could indeed have lent its name through a slip in spelling.

  Marie-Antoine Carême, a celebrated chef of the period, traced the word to magnonaise, from the verbs magner or manier. Prosper Montagné preferred moyeunaise, or moyennaise, built on moyeu or moyen, Old French words for egg yolk. Others link it to the old verb mailler, meaning to beat.

  Joseph Favre wrote in his memoirs that the word is an alteration of magnonnaise, from Magnon in Lot-et-Garonne, where a cook would first have popularized it in the south of France. He noted that the sauce had gone by mahonnaise, bayonnaise and mayonnaise.

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• 4. From Jelly To Emulsion

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  In 1806, André Viard published Le Cuisinier Impérial and reworked a remoulade by swapping its roux for egg yolk. The appellation mayonnaise seems to appear in French cuisine for the first time that same year. In a second recipe, an Indian remoulade without mustard, Viard explained that the sauce binds more easily when the oil goes in little by little. This counts as the first modern mention of a stable, cold emulsified sauce.

  Grimod de La Reynière's bayonnaise of 1808 was something else, a sort of aspic. He wrote that a cook who wanted to turn cold chicken into a dish of distinction should compose a bayonnaise, "whose green jelly, of a good consistency, forms the most worthy ornament of poultry and fish salads".

  In 1815, Antonin Carême mentioned a cold "magnonaise" emulsified with egg yolk, and the word "mayonnaise" is attested in English that same year. Auguste Escoffier later wrote that mayonnaise was a French mother sauce of the cold sauces.

  Louis Eustache Ude's 1815 recipe, numbered 58, was still no emulsion. It called for three spoonfuls of Allemande, six of aspic and two of oil. Tarragon vinegar that had not boiled, pepper, salt and minced ravigotte or parsley completed it. The cook set the sauce on ice and added pieces of fowl or fillets of sole only as it began to freeze. Each dish was then masked with the sauce just before it set, and garnished with beet root, jelly or nasturtiums.

  By 1820, Viard described something much closer to the familiar sauce. He said it could be made to take in several ways, with raw egg yolks, with gelatine, or with a glaze of veal or veal brain. The most common method put a raw yolk in a small terrine with salt and lemon juice. The cook turned a wooden spoon constantly while a trickle of oil fell in. A little vinegar went in as the sauce thickened, and a pound of good oil in all. It could be served white, or green with ravigote or spinach, alongside cold fish entrees or salads of vegetables cooked in salt water.

  In February 1856, the Huddersfield Chronicle and West Yorkshire Advertiser printed a homemade recipe in a segment called "The Housewife's Corner". It used six egg yolks, half a bottle of olive oil and one-half teaspoon of vinegar. Readers were told to pour it over roast chicken or turkey, garnished with lettuce and hard eggs.

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• 5. Oil, Yolk And Patience

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  A whisk, a fork, an electric mixer or a blender will all do the job of making mayonnaise at home. The method is to add oil slowly to an egg yolk while whisking vigorously so the oil disperses. The oil and the water in the yolk form the body of the emulsion. Lecithin and protein from the yolk act as the emulsifier that keeps it stable.

  Two intermolecular forces, van der Waals interactions and electrostatic repulsion, set how strongly the oil droplets bond with one another. Their combined strength is what gives mayonnaise its high viscosity. Mustard adds flavor and stabilizes the mixture further, because it contains small amounts of lecithin. Vinegar added directly to the yolk lets it emulsify even more oil, which makes a bigger batch.

  About 1000 liters of mayonnaise can now be produced in 10 minutes. Large-scale production begins by dispersing eggs, either powdered or liquid, into water. Once that mixture is emulsified, the remaining ingredients are added and mixed hard until fully hydrated and evenly spread. Oil then goes in as fast as the mixture can absorb it.

  The non-oil ingredients are only a small part of the total, yet they are critical. They must be fully hydrated and dispersed in a small volume of liquid, and that can cause the emulsion to break down while the oil is added. A long period of agitation is often needed, which makes this one of the trickiest phases. Processing times shrank drastically as food technology advanced. The first sauce sold in jars, however, dates back to 1907 in Philadelphia.

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• 6. Jars And Squeeze Bottles

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  In 1907 in Philadelphia, Amelia Schlorer began marketing a mayonnaise recipe that her family's grocery store had been using in its salads. It was an instant success with local customers and grew into the Schlorer Delicatessen Company. This is where commercial mayonnaise in jars began.

  Around the same time, at Richard Hellmann's delicatessen on Columbus Avenue in New York City, his wife's homemade recipe featured in the salads. Hellmann's family came from Vetschau, Germany. The condiment became so popular that he began selling it in the "wooden boats" used for weighing butter. In 1912, Mrs. Hellmann's mayonnaise was mass-marketed, and in 1926 it was trademarked as Hellmann's Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise. After numerous corporate changes, it is sold as Hellmann's in the Eastern United States and as Best Foods Mayonnaise in the Western United States.

  In 1925, Tochiro Nakashima started the Kewpie company in Japan, hoping to create a condiment that made eating vegetables more enjoyable. Kewpie, also written Q.P., is the most popular Japanese brand and is advertised with a Kewpie doll logo. Japanese mayonnaise is typically made with rice vinegar, which gives it a different flavor from versions made with distilled vinegar. Kewpie's own vinegar is a proprietary blend containing apple and malt vinegars. The texture is thicker than most Western commercial mayonnaise, and it is most often sold in soft plastic squeeze bottles. It accompanies okonomiyaki, takoyaki and yakisoba, and may also come alongside katsu and karaage.

  A 2004 study showed that Russia is the only market in Europe where more mayonnaise than ketchup is sold. Russian mayonnaise is made with sunflower oil and soybean oil. It dresses the country's most popular salads, including Olivier salad, also known as Russian salad, and dressed herring. Leading brands are Calvé, marketed by Unilever, and Sloboda, marketed by Efko.

  Chile is the world's third major per capita consumer of mayonnaise and the first in Latin America. Commercial mayonnaise became widely accessible there only in the 1980s.

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• 7. Rules, Rivals And Numbers

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  In September 1991, Europe's Federation of the Condiment Sauce Industries issued guidelines saying mayonnaise should contain at least 70% oil and 5% liquid egg yolk. The Netherlands wrote that guideline into law in 1998, in article 4 of the Warenwetbesluit Gereserveerde aanduidingen. Most brands easily exceed these targets. In countries influenced by French culture, mustard is also a common ingredient and works as an additional emulsifier.

  A typical full-fat commercial formula can contain as much as 80% vegetable oil, usually soybean, rapeseed, sunflower or corn, depending on the region. Specialty products sometimes use olive or avocado oil. Water makes up about 7% to 8% and egg yolks about 6%, with vinegar at 4%, salt at 1% and sugar at 1%. Some formulas use whole eggs rather than just yolks.

  Low-fat versions cut the oil to just 50% and raise the water to about 35%. Egg drops to 4% and vinegar to 3%, while sugar rises to 1.5% and salt falls to 0.7%. Gums or thickeners, at 4%, help with viscosity, texture and a stable emulsion. On average, mayonnaise holds around 700 kcal per 100 grams, or 94 kilocalories per tablespoon, which makes it a calorically dense food.

  Miracle Whip was developed as a less expensive imitation of mayonnaise. It lacks enough oil to meet the legal definition, so it is marketed as salad dressing.

  In the United States, egg-free versions cannot be labelled as mayonnaise, because the definition requires egg. People who choose them include vegans, those avoiding cholesterol and those with egg allergies. They generally use soya or pea protein to stabilize droplets of oil in water. Well-known brands include Nasoya's Nayonaise, Vegenaise and Just Mayo in North America, and Plamil Egg Free in the United Kingdom.

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• 8. The Salmonella Problem

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  In a 1955 outbreak in Denmark, 10,000 people were affected by Salmonella from mayonnaise made by a large kitchen. Investigators found a pH of 5.1, a measure of acidity, and Salmonella counts of 180,000 colony-forming units per gram.

  A second Danish outbreak caused 41 infections and two deaths. That mayonnaise had a pH of 6.0 and counts of 6 million colony-forming units per gram.

  In 1976, serious salmonellosis outbreaks struck four flights to and from Spain, causing 500 cases and six deaths. In 1984 in the United States, 404 people became ill and nine died at a New York City hospital because of mayonnaise prepared there.

  The source of the Salmonella in these cases was confirmed to be raw eggs, and both commercial and homemade mayonnaise have been implicated around the world. In every salmonellosis case, the major reason was inadequate acidification. The pH stood above the recommended upper limit of 4.1, with acetic acid as the main acidifying agent. Some brands now use pasteurized eggs, which reduces this risk.

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