The Secret History of Mayonnaise: From Military Victory to Your Fridge

Hey everybody.

It's Nancy and Sylvia once again with Family Tree Food and Stories,

and here we are exploring all sorts of dishes and ingredients and

traditions that shape our lives.

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Anyway, this show, we're talking about something that's familiar to everybody,

that we can hardly not think about it at some point in the course of a day or

a week, and it shows up in our kitchens across the country and has for many

generations, and that's mayonnaise.

But Sylvia, before we start, I have a question for you

Sure.

actually.

It's not a question, it's a confession.

I love

that.

Yeah.

Sunday, it's Thursday, but maybe we should call it confession.

Thursday.

So I have had an addiction to mayonnaise over my life.

I love

that's a good thing.

mayonnaise, sandwiches, just like May bread and mayonnaise.

I

Oh, that's weird.

No.

yeah, Now you're

do two pieces of cheese and mayonnaise.

I could do Mayo Cucumber.

I could do May on a salad, I could do Mayo mixed with anything.

You can add Chipotle with it, so you get Mayo sauce.

And my dad loved Miracle Whip, which I liked as a kid, but I think now is

Yeah.

Oh

thing ever.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Well, you'll be forgiven,

Thank you.

that, that, thank you for the confession, though.

You're an addict and you know, we'll help you in your recovery.

Sister Sylvia, thank you.

keep eating it.

Hey, uh, yeah, let's talk Mayo.

have you ever held your ear up to the refrigerator door and listened in

on the great condiment triumvirate?

Not really, no.

go.

Okay.

Well try it sometimes because right in the door, probably behind the pickles will

be the three ketchup, mustard and mayo.

And I bet they talk to each other

It's like the Trinity, right?

Yeah, it's like the Trinity.

yeah, if you open refrigerators across America, chances are those three jars

are sitting there like old friends who have known each other for decades, and

it is almost like they're talking because they're such a part of our lives as.

You confessed.

but lately, you know what, Mayo has been getting a little bit of a bad

reputation and we all know that health trends come and go and suddenly people

say they're abandoning mayo in favor of olive oil or vinegarette, poor mayo.

It's gone from staple to suspect almost overnight.

And so maybe in this episode we can help kind of rehab it a

little bit, cause it's kind of an important element of our food stuff.

I agree with you, and it's so interesting when we think

about the essentials of Manis.

On everything from generations, right?

And on a burger, on a ham sandwich.

ham, Swiss cheese, mayo, oh, and mayonnaise has got to be

incorporated in cole slaw.

Lots of it, right?

And potato

Mm-hmm.

I don't know how the world got along without mayonnaise.

It's the quiet ingredient that has made so many dishes work, and I

think they even put mayonnaise in.

Wasn't there a recipe for mayonnaise in like a, a jello salad at some point

Oh yeah.

I think there is.

kind of somewhere weird along the

way,

pretty, much a staple in those picnics.

Right.

So how do mayonnaise become so deeply woven into the American

food tradition in the first place?

You know that story?

I will, uh, also say that sometimes there's

a marriage that takes place.

Like I like Michael Coleslaw with mayo and mustard.

Ah.

Oh yeah.

A little bit of zing or

wasabi.

Yeah, wasabi is good too.

well, you realize Mayo is just more than a condiment.

It's the backbone of dishes.

It shows up at family gatherings, community events, and, deviled

eggs were coming up on the season.

I love it.

potato salad at summer picnics.

Yes.

And again, coleslaw beside a barbecue plate, nothing

better is there to have that.

Coleslaw sitting there, kind of rub your meat into that

and eat them in one big bite.

It's the ingredient that really pulls it all together.

and along the way we're gonna talk about this, it has sparked some surprisingly

strong brand loyalties, and we'll talk a little bit about that too.

But we're gonna talk about the history first.

Absolutely.

So understand that mayonnaise, we have to start first with a little kitchen science.

What makes mayonnaise possible is something called emulsion, which is

simply mean a combining of two ingredients that normally refuse to mix together

like oil and water, or water separates from just about anything that's greasy.

I don't say greasy because oil isn't necessarily greasy,

it's just kind of oily.

Oily.

Yeah.

Egg yolks that contain an emulsifier that

allow them to come together.

So bill Knight, the science guy, we should probably have him on sometime,

Oh, I love

right?

Or beaker, the test tube character with the Muppets, right?

But when you whisk these two together, the oil slowly.

And the egg yolk and the vinegar, little lemon juice, and of course some mustard.

You get a little either wet mustard, it's Dijon mustard or dry mustard, and then all

of a sudden with these ingredients come together magically and make mayonnaise.

Have you ever made your own mayonnaise?

No, I've tried to make my own vinegarette and I always

go back to the cream-based ones.

I don't know why I try to eat just some of them, but that's also kind of a myth

if you consider the elements of Mayo, it's really not that bad if you think about it.

I mean, I think everybody just, it's got a bad wrap, it's full

of fat, that kind of thing, and

Well, I think what's happened is the commercial brands become a little,

I wouldn't say less healthy 'cause I wanna give them a bad rap on that,

but it's all the extra chemicals that make itself shelf, shelf stabilized.

But there is nothing more satisfying, I'd say, than making your own

mayonnaise because it's really very easy to do and it's kind of fun to

see how they all come together and whip up and then it's never white.

It's kind of a creamy, yellowy

Yeah,

Yeah.

You lose me on that.

Okay.

I'm the convenience gal in the family.

Alright.

But anyway, lemme tell you a little bit about the history.

We think, and there's a lot of myth that grew up around Mayo, which most important

things have myths growing up around them.

it approached in the 18th century Europe, most likely in France or

Spain, and there's a popular story, connects it to the port city of

Mayon on the island of Menorca.

Have you been there?

I

No, but it sounds wonderful.

does does sound wonderful.

After a French military victory there in 1756, a chef.

Created that sauce made from eggs and oil and it became known as mahona,

M-A-H-O-N-N-A-I-S-E, which later became mayonnaise and now, you know,

I don't care if it's true or not.

That's kind of a cool story.

I'll go with it.

But it spread throughout Europe's cooking during that period.

You know, I wonder whether Holland's has

anything to do with mayonnaise

Well, I looked a little bit into that Holland days and a lot

of these sauces have more mayo than maybe we know chefs may not confess.

And if you think about it, they're cream base, so why not, but again,

Mayo kinda lost its vaulted, place in the world of being fine dining.

' Nancy May: Right, and you think of Mayo as de class.

I I would even say that probably some chefs consider mayonnaise if

you ask for mayonnaise on things

Oh yeah.

As

like asking for ketchup.

yeah, that's right.

mayonnaise was considered to be a fairly refined sauce, something

that you might see in elegant kitchens.

Rather than the everyday m But when it crossed the Atlantic Cross the

pond, darling, its role changed dramatically instead of remaining

a fancy accomplishment, to meets or an accompaniment, I should say, not

an accomplishment, an accompaniment.

To meats and fishes.

It became the foundation of a whole series of family dishes that American

cooks began using in salads, like you said, potato salad, chicken salad.

Oh, like one of the best chicken salads I've ever made was a recipe

that came from my mom's best friend who's a southern girl, Southern

Pines, I think it's North Carolina.

she told us to put chunks of pineapple in your chicken salad.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

That's not a northern thing.

Yeah.

And also a little walnuts like a Waldorf

salad.

perfect.

Delicious.

Just perfect.

and you can't forget putting a little bit of mustard in there for a

little est zing, but eggs, and then all of a sudden this suddenly the mayonnaise

just became, wasn't just a sauce, it was an ingredient that defined entire recipes.

I

Yeah, and it was kind of the democratization.

Of mayonnaise.

And when it became just what all of us have in our refrigerator, I guess it

lost a little bit of that esteem that it

held.

Um, yeah, it kind of became, if everybody has it, But

I think we're changing that.

We'll talk about that a little bit later.

cause there's starting to be a real wars over mayo, but, , making it from scratch

and even under this earlier, takes a lot of patience and careful whisking.

I don't have the patience.

Well, that's, if you're doing it by hand,

Oh, you've got a blender

I have the

are so smart.

You are so

smart.

But you had to add the oil slowly.

I don't know if you do.

If it's a blender sometimes.

Yeah.

Literally drop by drop or the mister would break and separate, and not

everybody wanted to spend that kind of time before preparing dinner.

That challenge opened the door for one of the most important developments

in the story of Mayo, the jar.

Well, I have to say there is something , again, when you're making

mayonnaise from scratch, putting it in the kewpiesinart or whatever fast

blender you have, I was always told it's a very thin little ribbon of oil.

And I'm gonna give you a tip since you haven't made mayonnaise, and I

think you should actually try, it'll take you maybe five to eight minutes

at most to make your own homemade mayonnaise, you little ribbon of oil.

But if you change the oil from like olive oil to corn oil, or even

avocado oil, the flavor of your mayonnaise changes dramatically.

Hmm.

careful.

All right.

Well, I'll put that on my to-do list of life.

But the jar, the rise of the mayonnaise jar, uh, you can

use the mayonnaise jar for just about anything after the fact,

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

but one of the earliest and most successful commercial

mayonnaise brands came from a New York deli owner named Richard Hellman.

Surprise, I love Hellman's Mayonnaise.

yes.

Anyway, my

Hellman's mayonnaise sandwiches in the early 19 hundreds, he

began selling jars of his wife's homemade mayonnaise in his store.

Delis have the best stuff.

I gotta tell you, I've got deli stories up the yin yang.

But anyway, customers loved it so much that he started packaging it with a

little blue ribbon tied around the jar.

That's kind of ladi off for a, a deli of those days.

And the ribbon eventually, however, became part of the label

that we now know today as the blue on the Hellman's mayonnaise jar.

Yeah.

So, you know, interestingly enough, now I know some of the newest, there are

squeeze bottles now of mayo and all of

that stuff.

Well it's interesting 'cause you never see, now Dijon mustard is in a jar.

Uh, it's just kind of interesting, isn't it?

But to, I love the name Otto Helman from Germany.

Of course he was from Germany

Well, what about Richard?

I thought it was Richard Hellman.

Oh, Otto.

I think Otto was in there.

Oh, Richard versus Otto.

That was my dog, Otto,

I loved Otto because it was so German.

Okay.

All right.

Note to self, Richard.

He may have Americanized his name, but let's go on.

once Mayo became available in jars, , it quickly spread into American kitchens.

Everybody could make potato salad or chicken salad

without that delicate process.

I'd rather focus on that.

and it firmly established itself as a refrigerator staple along

with its brothers and its sisters.

and as the jars multiplied, so did the brands competing for loyalty.

just like so many turns to home preparation for the reasons of knowing.

Where your ingredients are and the stick of your hands taking part in creation,

people are preparing their mayo.

And I, I say that's great, Nancy.

I, I give you all the credit in the world.

no matter the trouble that we're doing everything else, aren't we?

We make our own beer.

We firm at our food, we can and freeze for the winter, our produce and our veggies.

So it's a natural thing that people would start making our.

Condiments as well.

And I know a lot of people are making their own vinegarette and their

own dressings, solid dressings.

And a lot of people will say, make your own.

It's not that hard and you don't, and you don't get all the, uh, other stuff that,

you know goes into it for preservatives

Not all of us have a restaurant to go to, to have dinner and have our

own personal chef make a meal for us.

But, so I, there's a little, little thing that I wanna share about mayonnaise.

I'll take a step back on that.

It's kind of interesting to taste mayonnaise from different

parts of the country and even different parts of the world.

So a number of years ago.

Bob and I had been in Paris and we had to try a McDonald's.

Oh, I didn't have to try the McDonald's, but Bob had to try the McDonald's

and so we ordered the french fries there was no ketchup, but they had

the little mayonnaise package, French mayonnaise packages from McDonald's.

Cute.

will not eat french fries now without mayonnaise.

Ah,

And the McDonald's mayonnaise was really good.

There was some sort of other herb in it that wasn't,

huh.

that wasn't just plain mayonnaise, it was a

little green something in it.

So it was, but I guess it was French, so it was Herb Darling as opposed to Herb.

yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, truffle fi fries have some version, uh, sometimes of mayo in it.

I know that.

so, you know, yeah.

It's, it's used in a lot of ways

and so it's good.

Yeah.

Okay.

But here's another surprise.

Along with the spread of home kitchens mayonnaise is still kind of the

silent ingredient that we use in so many different things that we said.

However, earlier.

Mayo was first used in elegant kitchens, like the French cooking, and it's instant

to be rumored and to be loved as bechamel.

Ooh.

but I thought bechamel was something else.

I thought it was a whole different thing.

I guess you're gonna have to educate me on that because you were the

restaurateur, but maybe, maybe not.

Yeah.

Since I'm the maker of the mayonnaise.

But there is some controversy as so whether it brings a more creaminess,

creaminess to an aioli, or a remoulade, or a tartar sauce, tartar sauce,

you know what tartar sauce is.

Well, I like it.

What is it?

It's nothing more than mayonnaise and relish.

I think that's pretty much it, right?

and I, a lot of times, uh, I'll use just, mayo for things.

I would like fish.

I'll just spread a little mayo on my fish as opposed to worrying about

the tartar part of it, I guess.

And fancy names like aioli, uh, are a or

ramalad.

I mean, you're just putting, I shouldn't say garbage.

I say you put crap in, crap in mayonnaise.

I'll be very refined about this.

But even still, it takes all those basic ingredients, the vinegar, the lemon juice.

Lemon juice really is surprising in what they put in.

I never even thought that lemon juice was in mayonnaise till I started to make it.

And not to mention all the other

creamy salt blue cheese can go into it.

Green goddess dressings, everybody's gotta get into the act even some of the fancy

chefs who are now doing their own thing.

Oh, I think some of the chefs now were branding their own.

Restaurant mayonnaise as to the style and flavor

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, sure.

I'm giving it its own kinda brand, you

know?

so yeah.

Yeah.

And then we have brand rivalries.

Now

my chef.

oh.

He is in love with Duke's mayonnaise to the point where

he has a Duke's jar tattoo.

No way.

Really.

Yeah, he showed it off to me the other day.

Oh, that's ATM I. Too much information

Oh, he is a warrior for the dudes.

voyeur for Dukes.

I'll have to tell a friend of mine who knows the Dukes folks.

Mm-hmm.

He is a warrior.

Yeah.

So tell me about Dukes.

the Duke story began in 1917 with a woman named.

Eugenia, . Eugenia Duke in Greenville, South Carolina, where during World

War I, she began selling homemade sandwiches to soldiers stationed nearby.

I love that story.

You know, it's like a mom packaging sandwich for the kids,

Yeah, but she was an entrepreneur.

she charged for it too.

Right, but make sure they had a taste of home before they went anywhere.

Anyway, the sandwiches became so popular that people began asking about the

mayonnaise that she used, that made it so delicious and homey, and she was making

then and selling the mayonnaise herself.

And Duke's developed a distinctive flavor

that people talk about and it's why there's such an adherence to it.

slightly higher proportion of egg yolks than many other brands, which gives an.

A very rich texture.

It also contains knowhow to sugar.

Yay.

Something that Duke's fans mentioned immediately when describing why they

prefer it, and the result is a tangy rich flavor that many people think

works really well in southern recipes

Well, you know, I never heard of Dukes until we came down south

yeah, it's a southern thing

when I saw it,

on the shelf and it was on sale, I said, we'll have to

try Dukes instead of Hellman's.

And I am now a Dukes fan.

like you said, predominantly because it doesn't have any sugar,

I was surprised at really how much sugar was in all the other brands.

So we're eliminating sugar, and I don't put it in when I make

it myself, but it's really good.

So let's stop for a second and take a quick break because there are so

many other brands that are good and healthy and some favorites along the

way that you might be surprised about.

So we'll be right back.

So Sylvia, we're back to mayonnaise.

Just slathered on, oh my God.

I could probably eat it by the spoonful

Can I tell you just a quick, review just so people can know

this, just a little bit more about the difference between Dukes and Hillman's.

Please, please.

Dukes has more fat, so it's thicker.

It's richer, and it's made to.

Eat with fried foods, like I guess a fried fish sandwich would have.

you mentioned McDonald's I think when we were talking earlier and I can

imagine that there's a lot of it of it.

Maybe it's tartar sauce on their fish sandwich, but it's really good

and they use vinegar and it's tan.

For that reason.

And then Hellman's is milder and it's lower in fat and uses distilled

vinegar that makes a difference in lemon and it tastes lighter.

So it's good in baking more so than Dukes, cause I guess the high fat content.

I don't know.

and I have a little trick for mayonnaise.

Something that most people don't realize that the commercial burger

places, you know, the fast food places will use, most of them have

like the special sauce or whatever it is that they'll put on the bun.

And the reason why they put it on the bun before you get to the burger where

the burger doesn't touch the bun.

Is because all the juices don't soak into the bun.

It creates kind of like a barrier so the bread doesn't get soggy.

that's interesting.

A little science, mad science with mayonnaise again.

Hmm., I like a burger if I'm eating one out

where you get your mayo on it.

And I try to be careful not to use too much mayo, but I can't resist

when I go get a five guy's hamburger.

I gotta have

mayo.

God.

Those will

And, and yeah, a week.

And I like it when you envelop it completely with the foil and by

the time they get it to you, it's been in the foil for a few minutes

and that just makes all the flavors

permeate throughout the whole sandwich.

And I don't normally eat a whole hamburger ever, but if I go to

five guys, I eat the whole thing.

Even though it's like, I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

I

Well, and, and this is slightly off topic, but I should say,

Bob investigated and researched the correct way to eat a burger on a bun.

How

so you put the mayonnaise on your bun and then you put the bun top

on top of the burger, and then you turn the sandwich or the burger upside down

so that again, the mayonnaise holds the juices and it doesn't get into the top

and it doesn't get all cookie over where the bottom of the bun will get gookie.

But you don't wanna do that.

So apparently you eat

the burger upside down.

With the mayonnaise, protecting all that delicious brioche buns that you

have.

Yeah.

You know, we have all these new kinds of mayo.

You might even say Mayo substitutes,

right?

I go to Whole Foods and there's a whole, whole area full and,

increasingly at the more mainstream grocery stores too organic.

There's vegan.

Vegan.

I guess vegan wouldn't have eggs, would it?

Would it is vegan eggs.

Well, I guess a pescatarian is a fish, eater only, but

I

think vegan is, you don't eat any dairy or eggs or any of that, I think

there's a hardcore vegan versus a soft core

But I know, but you run into 'em all the time.

But they plant-based for vegans, dips and they're spicy, Chipotle, all of

those things use mayo as a. Right.

And then have you ever been in a, a test, a great Mayo swap test?

I have not been a great, no, I have not gone there.

Yeah, it might be kind of interesting sometime to do that.

and they say it's kind of like if you try to fool somebody with decaf

coffee versus coffee, real coffee, that they'll know immediately.

Although I've done that experiment before.

How cruel of me, right?

And the person didn't know.

Isn't that

mean?

Think about how mean that was.

I can't tell the difference.

Sorry.

Somebody asked for decaf and I gave them real coffee just

so I could see what their reaction

was.

yeah,

I'm a bad girl, but anyway, most people will say there is

an actual taste difference and I hadn't thought about it till I did this research.

I mean, it's kind of interesting,

Well, I can taste the difference in certain

mayonnaises for sure.

I was a Hellman snob and now I am pretty much close to 90.

5% Duke snob,

Ooh.

I love that.

I love

that we've converted you.

right.

Yes.

You have converted me.

I'm, becoming the Gator girl as I call myself down south.

'cause I've gone from Nutmeger to Gator girl in Florida.

I love that.

. Nancy May: So we are talking about taste testing and have you ever heard of Kewpie

No kewpie dolls.

I've heard of

Right.

The kewpie mayonaise is, this is a big thing down south.

I haven't seen it up north at all, and it, you've got a picture of the little kewpie

doll on it, and it's a squeeze bottle.

You can turn it upside down.

That apparently is one of the top.

Mayonnaises in the May.

I don't know if that's

the

correct word, main eye, right.

We'll have to ask Ms. Manners or or whoever for the correct pronunciations of

mayonnaise or mayonnaises or main eyes.

But eventually cooks have admitted their secrets and

they've switched brands over time.

Yep.

You switched

I

switched brands, yes.

Okay, I just came up with it.

Oh, Okay.

The next time you decide to change careers from being a famous podcaster

and you decide to go to chef school,

do you know what the first test they'll give you is?

How to make mayonnaise

No.

Your palate, are you a super taster or are you not?

And it makes a difference.

As a chef, you've got to be able to taste all these nuances of food, right?

I

am

gobble and gulp.

I don't think I would be one, but my former chef was a super

high taster, and you could tell when he would talk about food, he knew all

these notes and the nuances and all that.

It's just fascinating to me

You know, I think you can, you can learn to teach or

train your palate to do that.

I have a friend who was a, a trader on the floor, a financial trader.

And she quit her job to become, not sommelier, but what they call a

wine expert, which is way, level over the, we'll have to have her on

as a guest or something sometime.

And she enjoyed wine, but she actually trained her palate to taste the

subtleties in very tiny little subtleties.

And we had wine together one night before.

I moved and she moved out to California.

And she orders a, a glass of wine that I think was like a hundred dollars

for a glass of wine, and I thought that better be a really good glass.

She could tell that the wine had been the day before.

Wow.

I was impressed.

Yes.

impressive.

I remember the show Frazier.

he and his brother were a wine taster extraordinaire.

You know, it was interesting.

hey, but this next thing is gonna be something you would

eat a southern tomato sandwich.

I would eat a southern tomato sandwich.

Yep.

I would do with, mayonnaise of course.

Mm,

And maybe I think you can we make aioli and mayonnaise?

Sandwiches?

I don't know.

We think we should try it with a little wine in

Yeah.

Wine sandwiches.

Right.

But

the key is the tomato.

when garden tomatoes arrive in July and August, I don't know about Florida,

you must have 'em all year round, but

We have to big tomato patches down by south, south of Tampa.

Big area.

Yep.

But here, the very best tomatoes are July and August when

they're just falling off the vine.

And you can, you can, oh you, they're just good.

I don't know what they are, but you could like take one and eat it like an apple.

I mean, that's how good it is.

And tomato pie is one of the very best things, and it uses some mayo too.

Tomato pies are delicious.

Does it use mayonnaise, tomato

pie?

sure.

I'd have to

I learned what a tomato pie was when it came down here.

They are delicious.

It's something that us northerners really don't know anything

about tomato pies, but they are

Oh, they're really,

good.

And I think if you think about it, just because the sandwich is so popular,

there's some kind of ingredients in the mayo that marries the richness of

that tomato, and they go together like.

whatever

and

whatever.

Yeah.

P, B and J, I mean,, with another interloper

I think you have to be careful on the type of mayonnaise

that you use because have you ever put some mayonnaise on tomato

and the mayonnaise just kind of slides off?

Mm-hmm.

So I think it's maybe either the timing of the to tomato that you buy

it and you cut it and you slice it versus maybe the type of mayonnaise that you use.

But I would agree.

And, uh, cucumber mayonnaise and cucumber sandwiches, little

tea sandwiches, darling, for

Yeah, I forget that the Derby sandwich, um, Ben Betine,

uh, ah, can't come up with it or served at Derby parties up here.

Um.

Little, you know, cucumbers and mayo.

and they're just real simple.

Now, I don't even think they have that in a little tiny little white bread.

This is on white bread, you know.

but uh, Dukes fans insist that the tangy flavor balances

the sweetness of the tomato.

So they vote for Dukes, of course.

I could see that.

it's so subtle.

I wouldn't say.

I'm, so this is the deuce debate.

I'm not sure it's tangy versus sweet, but I don't know exactly.

My palate needs to be refined and trained.

Mm-hmm.

Well.

Work on that before you go to chef school.

Okay.

Um,

Mm-hmm.

anyway, I think like many food traditions though, everything tastes

better at a certain time of the year.

And tomato sandwich in the summertime, you're sitting there with a, iced

tea

sandwiches.

Oh my god.

Oh, bologna sandwich

on white bread.

Nothing any better.

carries that taste of the time.

It's being prepared and eaten.

I mean, it's just wonderful.

Wonderful.

but tomato, it's a potato salad, represents summer, and

then of course you have mayonnaise and oh, and macaroni salad.

Macaroni, church picnics, family reunions, neighborhood potlucks, mayonnaise.

You can't, you have to buy mayonnaise by like the, you have

to go to Costco to buy mayonnaise.

That's it for these things.

When the summertime comes,

Costco or Sam's Club or someplace big where you get the big, I don't know what

they call 'em, 10 Callen jars by then, but yeah, certain kind of bowls of food.

Just have to start with mayonnaise before you put anything else in it.

Yeah, I guess you gotta be more careful too with picnics.

I know a lot of people won't eat.

Very much of that.

If it's out in a picnic style,

You know, I think they put so much stabilizer in it.

I haven't died from a or gotten sick on a bad mayonnaise sandwich yet, so

Yeah.

I'm the iron queen.

Well I, I just talked to someone once who had a bad experience,

I guess, where a buffet was left out for too long and they got sick.

Whether it was that or whether it was just, you know,

I've had that without mayonnaise.

I think it's a fish that you have to worry about.

But anyway, you, so you can add celery and other chopped pickles.

We talked about that.

Oh, was it?

Uh, pineapple or grapes and mustard.

And if you wanna get, if you wanna get really fancy, you can add wasabi.

That's

really good.

spicy, isn't it?

I don't know.

Not when you have mayonnaise in it.

Sort of.

yeah.

It calms it down, but almost any version relies on mayonnaise.

It doesn't matter what it is.

Right.

Any, well, I'll say German potato salad doesn't rely on mayonnaise.

I don't think so.

I think we're fair there.

Anyway, that's mayonnaise.

So when you think about mayonnaise, well, I think we should

become the mayonnaise, the wain eighth.

Do I say mayonnaise three times fast with your tongue full

anyway, but we should become the mayonnaise whisper.

Or maybe you can do that with your mouthful of mayonnaise and Margaret's

potato salad one day or another.

Yeah.

Meredith's into that sort of stuff, so we'll ask her

Right.

Meredith actually sent, I have to say in her thank you note because she

sent me a recipe of chicken salad, her mom's chicken salad, which was

very sweet, all handwritten note.

so I can put it in my book, in somebody else's handwriting,

which I thought was just

Hmm.

Yeah.

Community

community and sharing.

Yep.

So mayonnaise, it may not be as simple as you think.

A little bit more complex, and when you understand the story behind that

jar, the blue jar or the yellow lid, or maybe the cupid do that's on your

mayonnaise jars, think twice about the story behind it and really how fancy it

started out in European kitchens, darling.

And yes, maybe it's, it's something that Julia had in her cookbook,

you know, art of French Cooking.

Mm-hmm.

there you go.

I'm gonna have to try Dukes.

You are.

So on that note, next time you open a jar of mayonnaise, please think

of family tree, food and stories and share your story with us.

Maybe a recipe of how you use your mayonnaise or don't use your mayonnaise.

Or maybe, make your own with a little dash of something delicious like wine.

Oh wow.

Because every meal has a story and every story has a feast.

Please share and like the show with your friends and family and

come on forward with your new

Mm-hmm.

stories or different mayonnaise stories because

we'd like to hear yours too.

And everything goes better with wine.

There you go.

But I'll have a mayonnaise sandwich with a bottle of wine.

We're done.

Ing,

I'll be seeing double in the mayonnaise jars

on that note, please take care.

We'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon.

Bye-bye.