Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is fat, water, detergent, and flavour. Sounds yucky! Never fear, when you make your own mayonnaise, the ingredients are all natural foods and you get to choose the flavour.

History says the French copied mayonnaise from the British and added only the name. From that point on there is divergence in ideas on how to make mayonnaise. There is a divergence theory that points to Britain as the source of the idea for mayonnaise. Divergence theory says that when there are two or more populations of ideas or plants or animals, the oldest population is the most diverse. Australian recipes for mayonnaise are more diverse than those in any other country and many of the Australian recipes are based on British traditions, pointing to Britain having the longer history.

The French use vegetable oil and mustard. The Spanish use olive oil but not mustard. Americans use canola oil. Traditional Australian recipes use cream or sour cream or condensed milk or one of the vegetable oils but not canola. When Americans manufacture mayonnaise in Australia, they use canola and, weirdly, they add sugar but then they add sugar to everything.

Detergent

Lets start with the scary ingredient. You know detergent makes fat dissolve in water. In the food industry a detergent is called an emulsifier. Lecithin is the most popular emulsifier and lecithin is in egg yolk. You use egg yolks in mayonnaise to make the fat content mix with the water based ingredients.

The foreign multinationals mass producing mayonnaise in Australia would like to use less egg because egg cost money but there is a minimum amount required to dissolve the fat. Some cheap brands (all the brands in our local supermarkets are really cheap rubbish no matter how ridiculously expensive some of them are) add cheap lecithin extracted from Soy and other sources so they can use less egg. Some manufacturers import cheap powdered egg from unnamed sources. The result is rubbish. Make your own mayonnaise or have your food naturally free from all fatty sauces and toppings.

Use fresh free range eggs. Look for eggs produced without antibiotics or other creepy chemicals. Organic sounds good but they can be double the price without a guarantee the hens are well treated or healthy. For organic, you have to find the certifying agency then look up what they check when they visit the hens.

Use one large egg yolk for half a cup of mayonnaise, two large egg yolks for a cup of mayonnaise, or three egg yolks for a cup of mayonnaise when the eggs are small.

Fat

About 70% of the final mix will be your fat ingredient. Olive oil varies from 100% fat through to 98% fat in extra virgin olive oil because the extra virgin oil has a higher percentage of acid and natural flavour form the olive. Most vegetable oils are 100% fat. Cream is 35% fat and clearly preferable when you want to reduce your fat intake.

Thickened cream is a manufactured product where they thin out cream with cheap water then add some cheap gelatine to produce a fake thickness. For some strange reason, the cheap artificial thickened cream sells at the same price as cream and outsells cream. I expect a lot of people actually think thickened cream is cream that is made thicker, not thinner.

Boutique manufacturers of mayonnaise use sunflower oil or some other special oil and mention the health benefits of the oil. The mass manufacturers use canola because it is a plant genetically modified to grow like a weed and be really cheap. In fact the Monsanto genetically modified canola has already invaded Australia and is destroying the value of huge areas of farmland plus invading native forest. Refuse to buy anything containing canola.

Oil is fat. Water is cheaper and healthier than fat. We consume a hundred times more fat than we need for nutrition. Unfortunately most manufactured products sold in the food category are made from manufactured oil and manufactured oil has all the nutrition removed because the nutritional components are connected to the components that make oil deteriorate. Manufactured oil makes you fat. Manufactured oil contains no nutrition of any sort. The reason you look for extra virgin and other labels on oil is that there is still some nutrition left in some of those oils.

Wheat germ oil contains vitamin E but it has to be refrigerated and used in a few days. Cream contains vitamin D but it has to be refrigerated and used in a couple of days. You can see why mayonnaise manufacturers do not want to put nutrition in their mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise made from fresh whole cream has the highest amount of nutrition and the lowest level of fat. You have to refrigerate the mayonnaise until you serve it and and serve it the day you make it.

Water

You put water in the mayonnaise through the flavourings. Both vinegar and lemon juice are based on water. The egg yolk makes the fat component water soluble so that it mixes with the vinegar and lemon juice. Vinegar and lemon juice provide acid to kill bacteria. Manufacturers like vinegar because it is cheap and acts as a preservative. Lemon juice goes off so manufacturers cook the life out of the juice or they import cheap powdered lemon extract made by burning lemon juice dry in some third world country where labour is incredibly cheap.

Flavour

Mustard and a whole other range of flavours are all water based, another reason for the egg yolks. Mustard is the most popular addition to mayonnaise. Dijon style mustard is the most popular mustard added to mayonnaise. Dijon mustard is a milder mustard mixed with vinegar. you could use a smaller amount of a stronger English style mustard because you are already adding vinegar to the mayonnaise. if you add powdered mustard, give the mustard an hour to soak the flavour into the mayonnaise.

Wasabi is another popular variation. Wasabi is related to mustard and horseradish, giving you an idea of the complementary flavours you can use in experiments.

The lemon juice is optional and you can experiment with other citrus flavours plus some bitters. Think of the food under the mayonnaise. If you are placing the mayonnaise on cooked dead pig, say a ham salad, look at the other flavours used with cooked pig. Pinot Noir is the preferred wine for serving with pig and you could add a small amount of Pinot Noir to the mayonnaise if you had a really richly flavoured Pinot Noir. White wines are served with fish and prawns. You could add a concentrated white wine, from a Botrytis affected grape, or green grape juice.

Cream

I mentioned cream as an alternative to oil. Some people do not like cream because it is a dairy product or it is high in fat or it contains cholesterol. Start with the dairy product rumour.

What is wrong with dairy products? Some people cannot digest some components of dairy products. The most popular alternative to milk is processed soya beans and many people cannot digest soya products. Diary products are more nutritious than soya bean. Dairy products are lower in fat than soya bean. You can buy diary products predigested in the form of yoghurt and sour cream. Creamy yoghurt makes a lovely mayonnaise so long as it is natural full cream yoghurt and you reduce the vinegar content to balance the already slightly acidic yoghurt. You might also need an extra egg yolk because yoghurt is not made from full cream.

People from Asia have the least exposure to dairy products and often do not like the smell. They may accept sour cream or yoghurt. There are countries in tropical regions where they never touch fresh milk but use lots of condensed milk. Ask you guests for their preferences.

Cream is high fat, 35%, but extra virgin olive oil is 98% or 99% and all other vegetable oils are 100% fat, making them mega bad. Mayonnaise is 70% fat ingredient. Mayonnaise based on vegetable oil is 70% fat. Mayonnaise based on cream is 24.5% fat, just one third the fat level of any other mayonnaise.

Cream does contain cholesterol and cholesterol is a natural detergent that dissolves fat for transport through your body. If you want to reduce your cholesterol level, reduce your fat intake. that means no mayonnaise. No, not ever!

Do not use manufactured fat reduced mayonnaise. All the nutrition is removed in the manufacturing process. When you are reducing your fat, remove all fat that is not nutritious. Remove all manufactured products. Get you fat intake only from fresh fish and other fresh sources that retain their vitamin content plus essential fatty acids.

Omega 6

Omega 6, Linoleic acid, is an essential fatty acid. People living on processed fats get too little because processed food contains too little or too much because cheap soya bean oil contains a lot. You should consume about four times more omega 6 than omega 3 and, if you flood your diet with soya bean fat, the omega 6 will destroy your intake of omega 3. Avocado, eggs, rapeseed, and sunflower are good sources of omega 6. When you use eggs in mayonnaise, you get your omega 6 requirement and do not need the overload from soya bean.

The cheap canola oil used in many cheap manufactured products is a genetically modified rapeseed. The use of canola and eggs in mayonnaise makes the omega 6 ratio too high.

Omega 3

Omega 3, α-Linolenic acid, is more important than omega 6 because, with the flooding of our diet with canola and soy products, omega 6 is suppressing our processing of omega 3. Hep see is a great source of omega 3 but one of the 22 commercial varieties of hemp also contains a drug. Flax, linseed oil, is a great source and goes off quickly if not refrigerated. Flax seeds are incredibly hard to digest and have to be minced before eating. Fish is next but fish oil makes mayonnaise taste awful. Walnuts are a good source. If you could make mayonnaise from fresh walnuts or fresh walnut oil, you would have a really interesting and nutritious mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise recipe

I will use cream because it is so easy to mix. If you use oil, you have to add the oil drop by drip while continually whisking the mix.

• 2 large egg yolks or 3 small egg yolks
• 300 ml cream. (About a cup)
• 2 teaspoons of vinegar
• 1 teaspoon of lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard or 1 teaspoon of prepared English mustard or 1/3rd teaspoon of dry English mustard

Beat them together for 10 seconds. If you use dry mustard, leave in the refrigerator for an hour while the powder dissolves.

Done.

Conclusion

Experiment and enjoy. Fresh cream makes the tastiest and lowest fat and most nutritious mayonnaise. Organic extra virgin olive oil makes the trendiest mayonnaise and the olive oil stick works with salads that contain olives. Food without mayonnaise is healthier.