By Anya Miksovsky '20
While mayonnaise has become a staple of almost every American household, creating it manually can be an arduous process. If not using a food mixer or blender, serious time must be dedicated towards stirring vigorously by hand. The process requires laborious sacrifice but, to true mayonnaise connoisseurs, results in a product infinitely superior to the factory-produced stuff you’ll find stocked at the grocery store. However, if made incorrectly, the entire batch will have to be scraped and started anew.
That’s because—like aioli sauce or hollandaise—mayonnaise is an emulsion, or combination of water and fats which normally can’t be mixed together. For the classic example, picture adding oil and water into the same bowl. No matter how hard or long you stir, the two liquids will eventually separate, with oil floating to the top and the denser water at the bottom.
Mayonnaise is composed of several basic ingredients including both oil and vinegar (which consists of water and acetic acid). Water and acetic acid are polar molecules, providing strong and stable intermolecular bonds. Meanwhile, oil molecules form bonds with other oil molecules. Both types of aforementioned bonds are sturdier than the attraction formed between oil and water, which is why under normal circumstances the two liquids won’t combine.
This is where the third ingredient of mayonnaise—eggs—comes into play. Egg yolks contain a molecule known as lecithin. Lecithin acts as an “emulsifier,” the illustration’s blue and red halves attracting vinegar and oil, respectively. In other words, lecithin acts as the glue holding the mayonnaise together.
To make mayonnaise, the eggs and vinegar are first combined together. Then, while whisking vigorously, oil is added no more than several drops at a time until the mixture has reached the correct viscosity. Whisking hard and introducing the oil slowly works to distribute the oil molecules evenly into the mayonnaise solution, ensuring none will clump together. “A single tablespoon of oil,” writes Harold McGee, culinary author of On Food and Cooking, breaks “into about 30 billion separate droplets,” each less than 0.003 millimeters across.
However, caution and dedication are of the utmost importance. One must not be overeager. Whisk your concoction poorly, or add the oil too rapidly, and you risk your mayonnaise “breaking.” In other words, the oil droplets will stick to each other and the mayonnaise becomes greasy. At this point, there are very few ways to salvage the process without great effort.
“The oil has to be added literally drop by drop for the first 3 tablespoons at least,” warns culinary student Andrew Liberio. “This is what gives the mayonnaise the thick consistency. If you add too much oil at once, or just mix all the ingredients at once, the sauce "splits," as we call it in cooking school...you can beat or whisk that mixture for hours, it will never develop the thick consistency of mayonnaise.”
But if executed properly, homemade mayonnaise will reach precisely the texture and taste, surpassing all store-bought brands. And thankfully, many modern blenders will do an excellent job of blending the emulsion for you, requiring minimal effort to create a perfect handcrafted condiment.
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