Mystic Mayonnaise

Melissa Webster

by Jesse Yancy
June 18, 2008

Most languages in the world include words, terms and phrases for things and ideas that the English language just does not have; we might enjoy gemutlichkeit frequently, but the Germans came up with the mot juste.

The French, of course, have a word for everything; amour prop pretty much sums up their linguistic character. This hubris applies to their cuisine to the nth degree. (Ok, I’ll stop.) The French table is the very basis of their diplomacy and has commanded the attention of both hemispheres since the days of Talleyrand, who tasked his chef to make atonement for Napoleon’s dismantling the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna. Both of these prepositions make delving into French culinary terminology risky business, especially if you’re not equipped with a working knowledge of the mother tongue.

But when it comes to mayonnaise, the French, typically, provide us with a prepared argument. No less an authority than the “Larousse Gastronomique” delineates a contention between Carême—who is reputed to have improved on the original recipe—and other authorities (the editors included) over the origin of the name for this cold emulsion, leaving a Gordian knot for us ordinary mortals to unravel. This furor aside, the word “mayonnaise” entered the English language in 1841, which makes for a safe bet that the sauce itself had been in France for a decade or more.

It took a little longer to get to the States. The best I can figure out is that it arrived sometime in the 1890s, but by the early years of the next century, it had become a true culinary phenomenon. Hellman’s started jarring their “Blue Ribbon” brand in 1912, quickly followed by Duke’s in South Carolina and Blue Plate in New Orleans, a sign that mayonnaise had taken a firm hold in two culinary capitals of the South.

Mayonnaise’s reputation spread quickly. It’s simple, inexpensive and before people started keeping a jar in their fridge, homemade mayonnaise had—and still has—a cachet that consigns those who use Miracle Whip to some lower circle of social hell. Mayonnaise became almost scandalous in places such as Amite County, Miss., where Rose Budd Stevens, aka Mamie Willoughby, a stalwart cook if there ever was one, said that mayonnaise was “a new-fangled something compared (by husbands) to bobbed hair, jelly-rolled hose and a touch of rouge to the cheeks,” in the 1940s.

Quelle scandale! Stevens adds that “women of that time were warned not to breathe in the mayonnaise while they were making it or the mayonnaise would curdle,” which she concedes might have been a ploy of busy mothers to keep children out of the kitchen.

Eudora Welty wrote about mayonnaise with a similar sort of attention. Welty’s memories of this magic emulsion date from her childhood in Jackson during the Great War. In her introduction to “The Jackson Cookbook,” Welty writes, “Mayonnaise had a mystique.”

“Little girls were initiated into it by being allowed to stand at the kitchen table and help make it, for making mayonnaise takes three hands. While the main two hands keep up the uninterrupted beat in the bowl, the smaller hand is allowed to slowly add the olive oil, drop-by-counted-drop. The solemn fact was that sometimes mayonnaise didn’t make. Only the sudden dash of the red pepper onto the brimming, smooth-as-cream bowlful told you it was finished in a triumph.”

As a child Welty “heard it said that two well-traveled bachelors of the town ... who lived on Amite Street had ‘brought mayonnaise to Jackson.'” Though not, she adds, “in the literal way I pictured the event,” meaning not in jars, since at that time, if you wanted mayonnaise, you had to make it yourself.

Homemade mayonnaise is still de rigueur in certain circles—such as the rarefied functions described by Gayden Metcalfe in her hilariously tongue-in-cheek accounts of Delta weddings and funerals—but nowadays there’s a problem, namely salmonella, which is endemic in most commercially produced poultry products. You run into the risk of infection from eating raw or lightly cooked eggs such as you would find in a Caesar salad or homemade ice cream and mayonnaise. But the risk of infection from raw, unbroken eggs is extremely low for healthy individuals if you use eggs that are absolutely clean, are locally produced (preferably from a non-commercial source) and are handled properly.

If you’re uncomfortable using raw eggs in any form or fashion, don’t. But if you want to try homemade mayonnaise, here’s how to make it. This is Rose Budd’s recipe.

Homemade Mayonnaise

1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
1/4 to one cup oil (she uses Wesson oil)
2 tablespoons lemon juice (or in a pinch, same of white vinegar)

Beat egg yolk in jar. Mix dry ingredients in beaten egg yolk. Slowly blend in one tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar, then beat constantly while adding the oil drip by drop, gradually increasing the amount as the mixture thickens. Add other tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar at last, mixing gently.

The following hint was passed around on how to save curdled, runny or separated mayonnaise: Gradually add the mayonnaise to either one beaten egg yolk or one teaspoon of very cold water, beating well until blended.

 
posted by on 06/18/08 at 07:17 PM. [printer-friendly version]