February 19, 2026 • 47 mins
Often called "the thick, creamy bastard child of oil and eggs" (well, called that at least once by Ben), mayonnaise remains one of the world's most divisive condiment. But where did it come from? In today's continuing Ridiculous History of condiments, Ben, Noel and Max get to the bottom of the case. Or jar. You get it!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max the freight Train Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You too, Uh, Max, Miracle Whip, I'm sorry I was
taking Yeah, miracle Whip. It's not Mayo. It's a Mayo
bait product.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It's the margarine of Mayo.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No one's no one's used the tagline. I can't believe
it's not Mayo.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yet it's true. I can believe it. Man, you're talking
about this off Mike your pan by the way, and
I'm no, yeah, I was so gross, just the idea
of it. The white stuff, slather, you know, words like
that come to mind. But as I think it happened
when I, you know, hit my late thirties, I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Man.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I'll slather a French fry in that stuff, like yeah,
you'll prop it up, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Dutch Noel Brown, Ben Bullen here returning with you, folks,
and now we're continuing series on all Things Condiment. Today
we're going to tackle a particular sauce that is surprisingly divisive.
Like you were saying nol. This thick, creamy bastard sun
of eggs and oil is known as mayonnaise. It's one
(01:43):
of the it's one of the French words that every
American knows. And the texture and color of this can
be kind of off putting.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Right. Yeah, I've made my I made my case for that.
But again I've moved, I've moved forward. Yeah, I still
don't like It's weird, man Like, I don't like it
when a sandwich you get from a fast food joint,
for example, is just overflowing with the stuff. It's squishing
out the sides. I don't think anybody loves that. That's
why the phrase light mayo is a thing. But I
(02:14):
will drown a French fry in the mayo.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
You cover everything in mayo. I want double that mayo.
But also gotta remember that I'm speaking from a condition,
condition as I haven't mayo in over like three years.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And distance makes the heart real fonder exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Look, we know that mayo is so divisive folks, so
much so that people who don't like mayo don't just
dislike it. They hate this stuff. And it's crazy because
it's often an ingredient. I recall years ago, guys, we
were in a conversation with our good friend and former
(03:00):
Paul Mission Control Decand about milk, and he and our
pal Casey Pegram had this ongoing argument about whether milk
is something you drink on its own or whether it
exists only as an ingredient.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, that depends on the person, I guess, you know.
And also I love the trope of villains in movies
drinking milk, like Anton Sugar and No Country for Old Men.
He's just been there because of the condensation on his
glass of milk. Another great use is fastards. Yeah yeah, Also,
(03:41):
and get out the I don't want to spoil it,
but there's a twist where and a character is turns
out to be a real battie is seen eating fruit loops,
I want to say, in milk, and there's something about
like she's picking out certain colors of the fruit loops
to show her inherent racism.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And then there's also of course clockwork orange.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh gosh, there we were sat in a Corova milk
bar acking up our razu ducs of what to do
with the evening.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's so weird because.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's milk plus. By the way, milk plus. Yeah, for
all the droops.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's strange because some people who despise mayonnaise will gladly
consume tartar, sauce, fry sauce, remolade, aoli and well maybe
not aoli. But they'll also eat like chicken salad, tuna salad,
what's the other potato salad?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I like a potato salad, but only if it's made
with sour cream, not a mayo based one. Don't don't
see that. I'm weird, man, I'm weird. I don't like
mayo in certain things. Will not touch a chicken salad,
no matter whether Matthew McConaughey made it or not. No,
I think that's touona salad. But I do love a
good Mayo and I love an aoli. And I think
I was mentioning to you as well, off Mike Ben
that it was when I realized that there were fancy
(05:02):
mayos and mayos that had more flavors that my brain
sort of adapted to the more basic of mayos.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, dude, I appreciate you saying that, because, as we're
going to see in this episode, we are all three,
all four of us, you tuning in at home ridiculous historians.
We're going to have some hot takes on this condiment.
I think restaurant tours figured out you can charge way
more for mayo by jusing it up and calling it aoli.
(05:35):
We'll get to it, but for now, pull up some
Sando bread, start prepping your chicken salad. Don't tell nol
what you're doing it, and let's begin. The first thing
we have to establish here is, guys, mayo is not
as old as I think we all assumed, despite the
(05:55):
fact that as very basic ingredients.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
It is very basic. And then you know a lot
of staple culinary things the French are responsible for, like
a hollandaise sauce or what is a burd blanc you know,
I mean the French responsible for so many basic sauces.
They have a job for it. It's the saucer, the saucier. Indeed,
and while mayo is in fact very basic in terms
(06:18):
of its ingredients, we've got eggs, oil, and again there
are other options for like flavoring and stuff, just some
kind of acid there, you go, some kind of acid,
But it's all about in like how you whip it in,
like the consistency for it to get to the right.
It's not just about slamming all these things together in
a bowl. You got to kind of know what you're
(06:39):
doing to get the right vibe, the right Mayo vibe.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, like that old classic rock band set. You gotta
hold on loosely.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You know, there's an art to it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And we are big sauce fans. That's why we have
this continuing series about condiments. It's no surprise that tons
of salts in use today have ancient roots, like soy sauce, dude,
or olive oil. We established earlier. The ketchup existed for
thousands of years.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Well, much more of a fish sauce kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, yeah, which is why you can get mushroom ketchup
in the UK still, or banana ketchup in the Philippines.
Before the wider world started using tomatoes, ketchup was the thing.
This is not the case with mayonnaise, which is odd, right,
it's kind of recent. Like you said, nol it's an
emulsion of oil, egg yolks, some kind of acid, usually
(07:37):
vinegar or lemon juice. Historians say the earliest footprints of
mayonnaise traced back to Egyptians and Romans because they used
a combination of olive oil and egg as a dietary supplement.
But folks, people did not figure out modern mayo for
(07:58):
a hot minute. Now we got several curdled competing origin stories.
There is a ton of debate about who actually, quote
unquote invented mayonnaise and why we even call it mayonnaise
in the modern day. No, Noel, if you do me
a favorite, I'd like to lean on your French pronunciation
(08:19):
for this first origin story.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I will do my very best here, Ben. This is
one of the ones. That guy that has those upside
down looking letters with the little little lippy hanging guys
on the bottom. I think I got this one. We're
talking about Louis Francois Alman d Vignon de plus is
duco Rischilu, like the cardinal from Three Musketeers. Remember he
was Battie, he was the big bad You nailed it, man,
(08:45):
thank you so much. No, not nailed it, but I
landed in the in the in the vicinity. I have
your French Friday, so kissed it. French kissed it.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
This is the Seven Years War in seventeen fifty six
and the idea is at our pal here led the
French forces to victory in a place called Port Mahol
mho n. This is in the Mediterranean island of Minorca
in Spain, and the story goes it's kind of similar
to the origin story of Ranch.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
As we'll see.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
This guy had a chef, and the chef was preparing
a fancy meal to celebrate the military wins. But lo
and behold, the chef discovered he did not have any
cream for his usual fancy French sauce, so he improvised
and used a mixture of olive oil and eggs instead.
(09:39):
He called this Mahonez after Port Mahol.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
That's so interesting. It's one of those what is it?
Necessity is the mother of invention situations? I guess where
it's like, Oh dear, I have no cream. Let's see
what we've got laying around. Let's just PLoP these guys
together and give it a good whip. And it's cream like.
And yet it's so isn't right? Ben Like It's got
the tang of say, a sour cream, uh, And it
(10:07):
has a similar consistency, but it is so its own thing.
There's nothing else quite like it. And that's what makes
it such a I don't know, like a singular ingredient
that you can't really what do you substitute for mayo?
I guess sour cream would be the closest thing in
my mind, and yet it still doesn't quite fit the bill.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, mayonnaise in the Pantheon of condiments has always.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Of a Campeon of condiments, the gods of condiments. It's
a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's always reminded me of the experience of seeing an
unusual animal for the first time. Like you look at
a giraffe and you think, how'd you get here?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Man, like a platypus and you're like, why, why, why why?
He's got a venomous anal gland or something on a
plats Oh yeah, yeah, thunder is little little little hoot.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yes, I'm sorry, is only egg laying, venomous mammal.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It's a weird guy. Yeah, the platypus. It's a heck
of a remix of therey Go Ben. But no. I
also love the idea of perhaps a Rogues gallery of condiments,
which would probably include stuff like what's that really gross?
One mustardo? Oh? Come on, is it gross? You said it?
Was gross. I thought you didn't like it. I thought
you were the one that was slamming Mustardo, not in
(11:27):
the like yeah, you're like, you know, knocking him back.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, I mean it's not normalized for.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Us, Okay, but it would. I think it would go
in the rogues gallery. I think it would. It would
be the asylum of flipping condiments. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, it's a harlequin and a joker team up for sure.
Max just popped on.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Pop on and a pop off. I can't just say,
isn't it what started?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It's like fuzzy fruit.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It's weird candied almost. It's like mustard candy.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's almost like a like a like a Yeah, it's
mustard fruita spicy mustard and fruit preserves. So it's mustardy
chunky jelling basically. Yeah and off, mic, folks.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
We had a conversation, I guess a year or so
back where we were talking about our favorite condiments and
what should be next in this series. That's where I
was pitching Mustado And yeah, you're right, Noel, I said,
I thought it was gross.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I have tried. I'm looking at it though, Ben. It
almost feels like a chutney mixed with the mustard, which
inherently sounds kind of maybe good, like one of those
papaya dogs you get in New York and then put
a little mustard on there. I think I might be
here for that, but I'm sorry to mean to derail
us talking about an unrelated condiment. But back to Minorca. No,
(12:52):
I think we're moving past Minorca now to the French
city of Bayon.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Ah. Well, there's another version of that same tale, the
Seven Years War, and they will argue that the chef
learned a sauce recipe that pre existed, Salsa mahessa from
the castle On, speaking natives of Minorca. Not everybody agrees
as you're saying. Some French chefs will tell you this
(13:17):
oil and egg mixture was called, as you said, no
baldness from Beyont.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
You got your mayonnaise bayonnais in your holiday inn that
as a really dated hip hop. I love it's got
ham in it, though bits of ham.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, yeah, bail known historically for its ham, not historically
for its ham.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah the region. Rather, I made a mistake. I thought
that their mayonnaise, that mayonnais had a little chunk of ham.
And I'm a goofball sorry about that. No, but the
region is known for sort of like the oh gosh,
what's the right Spanish ham Iberika exactly very similarly notable
ham region.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yes, we love a notable ham like William Shatner or
Matt Berry.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So beyonaise today is going to refer to a mixture
of mayo and a certain type of chili pepper. But
whatever the origin story, this sauce later gets called mayonnaise,
a French term, because of a printing error in a cookbook. So,
fellow etymology nerds, welcome to our weird hangout. Some people
(14:32):
speculate the word mayonnaise comes from the French word manie,
meaning to stir or to blend by hand, or boyeu
meaning yok, like egg yolk. There is a famous dude,
a French chef named Marie Antoine Care. He substituted vegetable
(14:53):
oil for olive oil in his recipe and this was
a game changer. It produced a lighter version of mayonnaise
that became popular throughout Europe, the United States, and as
we'll see the rest of the world. But it's kind
of no Max. It's it's a bit like the origin
of palm free or French fries, you know, rem fries. Yeah, yeah,
(15:17):
Never tell a Belgian that you want to order French fries.
They'll get a little bit saucy with you.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, for sure. French fries is such a colloquialism anyway.
I mean, palm fleets doesn't even translate to French fries. Yeah,
it's just fried potatoes. It's sort of a little bit
presumptuous to go straight to French fries. I've always found
that to be the case, because surely things have been
fried for since time immemorial. Oils have been long a
(15:44):
key staple for you know, cooking things since time immemorial,
whether it be putting it directly into a pan or
a cauldron, or boiling human beings in it. I think
we've long known that oil, when heated up, can can
definitely have a a frying effect. So it does start
to become one of those parallel thinking situations, right, Yeah,
(16:09):
well makes sense. I mean, just to slice up a
potato and throw it in the grease. It's not the
most unique take.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
No, It's like who figured out pants someone at multiple points.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And is already predetermined. All we need to do is
wrap them in fabric, and.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
We call that path dependency in terms of how our
predispositions determine uh the innovations.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
We later create. Well, and a potato has also long
been a staple food stuff because of how resilient it is,
how well it stores. I mean, obviously we know about
the Great Potato Famine, and you know the use of
potatoes in Ireland and how that was such a staple
food there that it was hugely devastating when that famine
took place. But it just makes sense, like I'm the
(16:59):
worst at letting my fresh veggies and fruit rot in
my fridge, but if I buy a bag of potatoes,
you better be rest assured. They might have a few
eyes on them. But you can pop those right off,
pop those babies right off, and good as gold, you can't.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, nice one there, man. We also know side note,
folks that potatoes and tomatoes didn't make it to Europe
for a while. It was part of the Great Transfer.
I love your point about parallel thinking because most historians
(17:40):
are going to argue that these basic ingredients exist around
the world for most of civilization, some kind of egg,
some kind of oil, some kind of acid, and most
historians will also argue that what we call mayonnaise the
way it's created now does date back to Mahome during
(18:02):
the Seven Years War, and the competing theories that largely
come from French culinary historians are kind of they're kind
of adda boys to the French culinary ego. They're invented
after the fact.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
M Yeah. And initially this thing, this sauce, this very
French sort of culinary leaning sauce, was considered pretty high brow.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Oh yeah, yeah, so there is no denying If the
French did not invent mayonnaise, they definitely popularized it, right
Like Chick fil A says, we didn't invent chicken, just
the chicken sandwich.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Very and they didn't invent the chicken sandwich. They didn't, sir.
I guess they're just in blind that theirs just so good.
It constitutes inventing the thing, because all the ones that
came before it were not properly chicken sandwiches.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Was it our waffle House episode where you and I
talked about the Popeye Chick fil A culture war.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
We did a little bit, and we also talked about
how those brands hit a little different in other parts
of the world. Yeah, Popeyes in particular is like such
a novelty, right right, But yeah, the culture we're between
Chick fil A and Popeyes. I think what we did
mention as well on that episode was when that viral
(19:26):
Popeyes chicken sandwich was hitten. Yeah, and people were like
knifing each other over the thing and drive throughs and
they were like running out of it. It was crazy,
you know. I jumped on the train it was a
good chicken sandwich, But that was when they were really
giving Chick fil A a run for their money, and
it probably kicked.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Off some of that Wait, you jumped on the train
of knifing people and running out of drive through.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I jumped on the train of liking that chicken sandwich,
thank you very much, and finding it superior to the
Chick fil a sandwich. Personally, just wanted to clarify for
our listeners, I've never knifed the person the sandwich in
my life.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
As Noel Brown's unqualified lawyer, I will confirm that he
has never, in fact stabbed someone brandish. He has brandished.
We will give the food around wildly. Give your sandwich now,
like you're saying, mayonnaise makes this intercontinental journey to the
(20:14):
United States in the late eighteen hundreds, mid eighteen hundreds,
and as we said, it's very very much a luxury
at this point. It's only served in fancy pants restaurants
like Delmonico's. Have you guys ever been to Delmonico's the
steakhouse in New York City.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Delmonico's the fancy It's one of those fancy the steakhouses
where you get everything a la carte. Right. Radio is
still side, sort of like Musso and Frank in Los
Angeles would be.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
In comparison, that's a great comparison because Delmonico's is at
this point in eighteen thirty eight, they are offering the
well to do the one percenters of the big Apple
h voice of chicken or lobster with mayonnaise, and mayonnaise
is presented on the same level of hollandaise or brene.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Sauce, totally like a fancy sauce exactly. It wasn't until
old Richard Hellman came along. He decided to bring mayonnaise
to the people. Yeah, he thought the mayonnaise off of
that high horse. Yeah, he thought it was high fluting,
and so in our ocritization, Man there we go, he said,
(21:32):
as we imagine in ridiculous history, cinematic universe. He said,
mayo for the people. You guys are too fancy.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And he opened a deli with his family in nineteen
twelve in New York City, and they prepared mayonnaise at home.
They used it as a binding material for all sorts
of different salads, the kind of salads you don't care for,
like chicken, tuna, so on. And they would serve these
dishes at the deli. This is so similar to the
(22:04):
idea of ranch, right. They would serve the things at
the deli, and the mayo eventually overshadowed the salad. So
by the nineteen twenties, customers are going up to Helman
and they're saying, hey, man, can I just can't just
get straight up mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Let me get a.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Taste, Let me just get a little spoon, Let me
hit that mayo. Come on, let me hit that mayo.
I don't need the chicken, I don't want the tuna.
I want just the straight up mayonnaise. And Richard's not
too precious. He and his spouse start manufacturing mayonnaise in Bolk.
This is the origin story of Helman's mayo.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah. I love this detail that they initially their packaging
was made of wood. Yeah. Yeah, it was a different time. Yeah,
that's weird and no time. However, they did switch to
the glass jars that we know and love today. I
suppose I'm more of a duke's guy, but we'll get
to that. Around nineteen twenty five he sold two versions
(23:08):
of the stuff. He used a blue ribbon to mark
one of them. Was the implication here that it had
won some sort of mayonnaise prize. Yeah, just like like
half blue ribbon the beer. Do you think self proclaimed
blue ribbon sort of thing, and that that logo is
still what you see on the jars today. What was
the other version?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
The other version wasn't also ran like, you will know
you're in a creepy place if they will differentiate between
the trash beer they serve you, Okay, the paps blue
ribbon or just paps.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
It was like, yeah, fair enough. So we got the
blue ribbon version and then the like drec version.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
I guess it's whatever's left over at the bottom of
the mixing mixing bowl.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I don't know, I don't know, Okay, don't need need
none of that let's stick with the blue ribbons. So
demand did start growing. They did status established a factory
for making the stuff, uh in Astoria or again. But
Hellman's wasn't the only jarred mayonnaise that was starting to
hit the market. We've got the also very humbly named
(24:18):
Best Foods, which also was selling a pre made version
of mayo over on the West coast Civic Northwest. I
suppose so they this was you know, competition for sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, and then we see monopolization right in nineteen twenty
seven Post Them Cereal Company, which is the predecessor of
General Foods. They did Post Them Cereal Company become Post.
I think that's a good question. What do we have
still alive.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
On a second posting, you know, in a Cereal company?
Is it posts? Survey says yes. Post Them was created
by CW. Post and is the original product that came
the Post Cereal company.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Okay, from my serial research from a number of years ago,
I found out that Post was a real pill. He
was a interesting All the Ceial guys, as we know,
the Kelloggs were interested.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Post himself was at.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Just like putting stuff up with people's butts.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Well that was the.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Other John Harvey. You know, they were both kind of
you know, but the weirder Kellogg was not the main
serial kellog.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Okay, I always got that I got those wires crossed,
and I don't the guy ever uncrossed them.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
I always wonder what it would have been like hanging
out with them both at once. One of them would
have said, I have opinions about grains, and the other
one would say, I have opinions about yogurt in the
worst possible way, I'll.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Tell you where to stick your grains. You know who
would have really gotten along with John Harvey Kellogg? Who
r f K jor uh Max.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
We got to catch you up on this. We resent
catch you up on this. We recently discovered that the
current US political official RFK Junior has engaged with ai
chatbots for nutritional advice to people in the United States.
(26:20):
And one of the things that this AI chatbot will
do is advise you on the most healthy vegetables to
put up your butt.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Mm hmm, and we put forth that the root ones
are probably the best option because of the shape.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
This AI chatbot help also help them with his poetry.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Oh man, this is a p show. We can't get
although that would have been right at home in the
what was it, James Joyce? Oh gosh, poetry?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Oh my gosh, guys, I just in the field. I
got in another argument about Finnegan's Wake.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I've got to stop doing it. And it's not good.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I I think it's beyond good and evil. Okay, Wow,
it is a series of letters purporting to be a
novel or.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
English Okay, so it's just it's some musings.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It's come on, I can't catch strays on this one. Guys,
my professor are still alive. You don't want to You
don't want to get in front of that freight.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Train, Ben, Yeah, mayonnaise does become We're getting to the
point where it's about to become a bit of a craze,
where we start to see like mayonnaise cookbooks with just
absolutely disgusting imagery, like when you posted year uh incorporating
mayonnaise with another fad food, gelatine, Yes, to create just
(27:50):
these monstrosities of culinary despicableness. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
By this point, Postum serial has a fired Best Foods
and Helman's Mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
The aforementioned monopoly.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yes, so now we've got a what is it Carls
Junior and Hardy's kind of thing? Theo cartel, a mayo cartel.
I love it, dude. So best food mayonnaise is sold
in the western US, while Helman's is sold east of.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
The Rocky Mountains. To your point bend, that's exactly right,
the Carls Junior versus Hardy's, the Checkers versus Rallies. You know,
there are basically the same exact restaurants that like to
brand themselves differently depending on what that part of the
country is more used to.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And we want to give a special shout out to
Duke's Mayo.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I do like a Duke's. Yeah, I'm a Duke's guy.
I don't know why. I'd be very curious to do
an ab taste test to see if it really is better.
But somewhere along the line, I got sold on Dukes
being superior to Helman's.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
That's because of where we spent our formative years. That's
what it is, son, Yeah, it's Dukes is a very
popular brand right in the American South, and there are
countless mayo alternatives catering to vegans vegetarians. You know you
got your eggless mayo, You've got stuff for folks with
allergies and so on, and this is almost a different episode.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
But Noel, you nailed it. Man.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
People have done a lot of weird stuff with mayonnaise, especially,
I want to say, in like the post World War
two environment, right, everything is gelatine and mayonnaise, and how
can we combine these? What can we put in there?
I just can't imagine eating mayo jello. I think I
(29:44):
maybe have mentioned before, and we've definitely.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Done an episode if you just do a little search
on like gelatin based fad foods and this kind of thing.
My mother was really fond of something that her other
was really fond of. So it's one of these generational
disgusting desserts that you have to make it every dinner party.
Something called Gentleman's salad well in and of itself, sounds
(30:10):
fricking disgusting, Like I mean, sorry, not to be too ichy,
be right. And I don't even know. I'm gonna google
it because I don't even know if my mom just
made this up or her mom made it out. Yeah,
it's fine, No, it's no, this is it's it's here.
Grandma's lime green jello salad recipe with cottage cheese and
(30:32):
jello and pineapple. It's like this gelatinous green loaf that
has like horseradish sauce on it and like mayo in
it and lime green jello and it is and cottage cheese.
It's just the worst. And my mom would always make
it in honor of her mom. Evaporated milk, pineapple, lime jello, mayonnaise,
(30:55):
cottage cheese, and walnuts. Yeah, well sorry.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Also, I love I love how sketchy any any food
sounds when you add gentleman's to the front of it.
When you add that possessive we see gentlemen's scoundrels pasta salad.
I can't remember if I told you, guys, I I
went down this rabbit hole and I ordered something called
(31:19):
Gentleman's relish.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Is that mustardo? It was during the mustarto phase. It is.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
It's like an anchovy paste basically, but it's GM's relish,
gentleman's relish, gentleman's salad. That just sounds gentleman's scoundrel. Come on,
a scoundrel, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
This doesn't quite make sense grammatically, though, Like what is
that a gentleman to be the scoundrel. This is a
scoundrel that belongs to the gentleman.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, he's a dirty rascal, or he's like a familiar
like in that in that Steve Martin film, what was it?
Dirty rotten scoundrel? So you run scoundrel, It sounds like
a cod man's pasta. So the gentleman's scoundrel would be
that you got the judge, your gentleman, and then his
partner who is the real rogue they're doing the crime,
and then the gentleman's the one that sort of the
(32:10):
straight man of the of the duo. And maybe mayonnaise
is in that rogues gallery, right, maybe mayonnaise is the
scoundrel of condiments. There was one guy from Japan who
absolutely fell in love with the idea of mayonnaise. Tochiro
(32:34):
Nakashima nineteen ten, he's an intern dude.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
An intern at Japan's Department of Agriculture and Commerce, and
he went to the UK and the US and he,
just like you said, just got just drowned himself in mayo.
He returned with a fascination for the white stuff as
well as orange. Marmalade was popular with the Paddington Bears
of the world and mayo and you use it to
(32:59):
make potato salad. And so this guy was like a real,
real mad scientist of flavor. You describe him very aptly
been as a Willy Wonka of what we call today.
This is also a tease for the next episode We're
gonna do, by the way, a QB mayonnaise, which is
so cool, if only in the way that it's packaged.
If you go to the cool Asian food specialty food stores,
(33:21):
it comes in like a like a plastic tube like
you would use to decorate a cake. It looks like
you're buying an action figure, you know. Also true, Yeah,
it doesn't. It come like in like a like a
like a kind of like a plastic bag. Almost.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, it has a plastic bag around the harder plastic container.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
There you go of the mayonnaise, and it's.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
A little bit sweeter than say your dukes or your helmets.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And much like a lot of Japanese products, the branding
is just adorable. You got a little baby, a little
naked baby with a little dippity dew hair, you know,
swoop on the top and yeah, it really does hit.
It's it's used in it is let's put it this way,
it is a feature. When it is used in a dish,
it is described as almost like a little some extra.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yeah, and given some lactose restrictions in that part of
the world, mannaise will often replace what people would use
dairy for, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And the big difference that made this thing so umami
and rich was the fact that it only used the
yolks of the egg rather than the whole thing. And also,
of course the proprietary blend of vinegars, including rice vinegar
which is much milder, and apple cider vinegar, which I
think ben would give it some of that sweetness that
you're accounting for. Oh, that's a good call. We know that.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
According to the QP Mayo website, our buddy Tochiro makes
this in nineteen twenty five to quote help improve the
physiques and health of Japanese people by making delicious tricius
mayonnaise so widely available that it becomes a daily necessity. Anyway,
(35:06):
as you said, egg yolk's science vinegar, maybe we talked
a little bit about the science of mayonnaise, and let's
break down the aoli thing like mayonnaise is an emulsion.
It's things that shouldn't usually.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Hang out together, right, and that therein lies the key
of how they're it's whipped and how it's combined to
create that emulsion. If I'm not mistake. And by the way,
just a quick add on QP another key ingredient MSG.
Just putting that and we talked about the demonization of MSG.
I think it has seen a bit of a reassessment
and it is basically just a flavor additive that adds
(35:42):
a little bit of that new mommy as opposed to
the way it was demonized in order to other American
Chinese restaurants.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right check out our episode on Chinese restaurants in the
United States. MSG is short for monosodium glutamate and it
is delicious.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
And another thing about QP two is you'll find that
it's a bit yellower, which is what you're gonna get
when you're making a real fancy mayo an aoli like
the the absolute ghost whiteness of prepackaged and mass marketed mayo.
It's not what it's going to look like. If you
make up a batch yourself, it's gonna have you know,
(36:24):
those egg yolks are gonna show and it's gonna be
a little more yellow, and that is maybe what people
might typically refer to as an aoli.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And as an off putting color. Right, people are very
sensitive to color when they're eating something.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
You think white is way grosser than yellow.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
You know, man, as a partially color blind person, I
would defer to you.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, it's just I mean, I think it's a personal,
you know, taste thing, for sure. But when I think
of when I see a yellow or mayo, I feel
like it's fresher. I feel like it's made with real
eggs because it's imparted that, you know, Hugh.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Now, a lot of people would say that they feel
a yellowed mayonnaise is older, right, has maybe been in
the sun, has maybe gotten That's a good point, then
close to expire.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Maybe this is me just getting over science effection. But
it's got kind of a snot.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Light like look to it. O said, don't make I
told you I just came around to mayo in my
late thirties. Well, don't do this to me.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Let's get ready, folks to dive into some science. So again,
an emulsion two things that shouldn't usually hang out. If
you just pour oil into a bowl and then you
pour water into a bowl. You will see that they segregate.
They stay separate, and no matter how oil and water right, yeah,
(37:49):
we even have a phrase for it. So no matter
how ardently or vigorously or how long you stir, those
two liquids will eventually go away from each other, and
the oil is going to float at the top, the
water is going to go at the bottom. So why
does mayonnaise work?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Now?
Speaker 1 (38:09):
At this point we have established that two key ingredients
of mayonnaise don't hang out together. We need a hero
and our hero in. This is the humble egg.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
The hero egg of today's story, like the hero pig
in that episode of Nathan for you. So, the egg
has a very specific molecule in it that I was
not particularly aware. I've called less ethan ain let go
the sound lessothin, which is the emulsifier in the equation.
(38:51):
This is the thing that allows those two things that
normally would not mix to be bound together. Yeah, like
our super producer, Max, that is a good point. Max
is quite there, the great emulsifier, Williams.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So you make mayonnaise by combining eggs and vinegar, and
then as you whisked to your earlier point, Noal you
can't add the oil all at once.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
You got to hold on loosely.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
You get a few drops in at a time while whisking.
This is going to be familiar to any chefs in
the crowd or home cooks. You have to do this
over time. You have to distribute those oil molecules evenly
into what will become your mayonnaise. If you pour too
much or if you whisk like an amateur, you're going
(39:43):
to break the mayo.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah. Also, I've often referred to as splitting, Like if
a sauce is splits, then you have whisked it poorly
or just not done it correctly in terms of the
rate at which you add the oil. And so you're
gonna get some splitting. And that usually manifested itself in
terms of seeing clumps and oil rising to the top,
(40:05):
and it's just not having that consistency that you want
and emulsified liquid like that.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, because of the chemistry involved, it's incredibly difficult, essentially
impossible to salvage your mayo if you break it or
if you split it. Noel, before we go, we've got
to We've got a whisk together. Some hot takes, all right,
we joked a little bit about aoli in the beginning,
(40:34):
I have often accused aoli of being nothing more than
a bit of marketing to make things more expensive. And
I want to apologize to you and Max for complaining
about Tapa's earlier, because remember I went through that phase
where I was super against Tapa's. I said, they're just
(40:54):
appetizers with a different word. Cheese sticks should be five dollars,
not seventeen dollars. Aoli is just a way to get
people to pay more for mayonnaise than they should.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know, it's funny, Ben. While those terms are today
often used super interchangeably, historically aoli is a little different.
It doesn't actually have eggs in it. It is more
of a Mediterranean sauce, like a satziki kind of where
it's garlic and oil. It's a garlic and oil emulsion. Well,
mayo is an egg and oil emulsion, but they are
(41:26):
They do kind of, you know, result in a very
similar tasting and appearing, you know, condiment, But aoli is
typically a little more pungent since it's got that garlic.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, it's a traditional condiment in province and Catalonia, right,
So true, aoli, to your point, is also an emulsion.
It's a little bit more time intensive to create olive
oil and garlic. So if you are looking at a
menu in God Save You or Tapa's restaurant, when you
(42:00):
see something that says garlic aoli, please know that is
super DUP's redundant. It's like saying vin number or ATM machine.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
It really is. Yeah. Garlic is the key ingredient of
what makes the aoli. That is one of the two
things that create the emulsion or that are emulsified together.
Aoli gets its creamy consistency in that pale color from
emulsifying those two ingredients with a bit of course salt added.
Because garlic doesn't have strong and multifying properties like egg yolk,
(42:31):
it does take a ton more effort to properly emulsify
olive oil into the garlic. So one the last thing
we got to do it.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
It's like making a resultant, yeah yeah, or making a
Holidays Right, We've got to give a shout out to
a phrase that I think we all are fascinated by.
Back in twenty eighteen, US media got in a huge
hubub for something called identity condiments. Do you guys remember
(43:04):
like identity politics, yes, dude, the culture war, I kind
of don't. I mean, I guess I've always associated or seen.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
That line of Mayo being like white people food, you know,
or like it's just Mayo's too spicy for that, Karen,
you know things like that, right, is that what we're
talking about. It came about due.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
To a decline in mayonnaise sales. Right during a period
of time where a lot of younger people like us,
we're struggling to have a job, dreaming to buy the house,
or dreaming of being able to afford going to a restaurant.
Mayonnaise sales dipped and the establishment media said that millennials
(43:51):
were killing mayonnaise. That turns out to be a little
bit overblown. And I don't know about you guys, but
I suspect Big Mayo had a hand in that culture war.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Maybe so, yeah, maybe so. I mean, you know, a
product like that that has just been around for such
a long time, and like the main players are still
kind of the first to market, you know, from the
olden days. You gotta shake things up from time to time. Sure, yeah,
and we hope make manufacture a little controversy there we go,
(44:26):
get your product back in the news have a.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Manufactured beef, right like celebrities that secretly love each other.
Here we are at the end of the history of mayonnaise,
looking boldly to the future in terms of all sorts
of condiment combinations like fry sauce or remember when I
think it was Heines did that thing where they started
(44:49):
making maychup or mayo chup. They started, Yeah, they started buying.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Okay, I stasically fry sauce, right, I do say gross
only because we're is weird mayo chuck. I don't like
the way that sounds.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Sounds like a but it sounds like a not good pokemon.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
I agree, But I do like, you know, a classic
burger sauce is so you can make that up with
a combination of mayo and a little ketchup and a
little smoke paprika, for example. There's different ways of doing it.
But if you ever see like sort of a pinkish
burger sauce that's pre sold, it sometimes has chunks of
pickle in it, which sounds gross as well, but it's
(45:27):
really good. I really like that a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
So where do we land in terms of one of
the most divisive condiments in the modern World Mayo. Yes, no,
for it, against it.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I'm for it, heavily for it.
Speaker 4 (45:44):
And I want to toss that in here because he's
kind of part of the show as well, one of
the biggest Mayo fans I've ever met.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Alex Williams, he loved me.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Thank you to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Thank
you to Alex Mayo Williams, who can pull this track?
What do you think about Jonathan Strickland?
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Is he a Mayo guy?
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:10):
I wonder if he rubs it on his bald head
at night to try to regross. There isn't there? Haven't
there been discussions of Mayo as like a cure all
as well, like rubbing it on your body? Did I
make that up? I think I might have made that up, y'all.
Sorry to end on such a gross note. We love you, Jonathan.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Oh yeah, Jonathan Strickland aka the Quiztor, thank you and
we look forward to Jonathan returning soon. A j Bahama's Jacobs,
who else.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Well, Gosh, Chris frasciotis and he's Jeff Coat and spirit
of course, the rude is a ridiculous crime. If you
dig us, you're gonna dig them, as well as Rachel
big S Finish Lands, the Doctor herself of Underwater Explosion
and Noel. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I hope everybody has enjoyed this exploration as much as
I have. And Max, we gotta fix the condition. You said,
it's the vinegar that eighty six is the Mayo for.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
You and the address.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Let's see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max the freight Train Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You too, Uh, Max, Miracle Whip, I'm sorry I was
taking Yeah, miracle Whip. It's not Mayo. It's a Mayo
bait product.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It's the margarine of Mayo.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No one's no one's used the tagline. I can't believe
it's not Mayo.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yet it's true. I can believe it. Man, you're talking
about this off Mike your pan by the way, and
I'm no, yeah, I was so gross, just the idea
of it. The white stuff, slather, you know, words like
that come to mind. But as I think it happened
when I, you know, hit my late thirties, I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Man.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I'll slather a French fry in that stuff, like yeah,
you'll prop it up, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Dutch Noel Brown, Ben Bullen here returning with you, folks,
and now we're continuing series on all Things Condiment. Today
we're going to tackle a particular sauce that is surprisingly divisive.
Like you were saying nol. This thick, creamy bastard sun
of eggs and oil is known as mayonnaise. It's one
(01:43):
of the it's one of the French words that every
American knows. And the texture and color of this can
be kind of off putting.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Right. Yeah, I've made my I made my case for that.
But again I've moved, I've moved forward. Yeah, I still
don't like It's weird, man Like, I don't like it
when a sandwich you get from a fast food joint,
for example, is just overflowing with the stuff. It's squishing
out the sides. I don't think anybody loves that. That's
why the phrase light mayo is a thing. But I
(02:14):
will drown a French fry in the mayo.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
You cover everything in mayo. I want double that mayo.
But also gotta remember that I'm speaking from a condition,
condition as I haven't mayo in over like three years.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And distance makes the heart real fonder exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Look, we know that mayo is so divisive folks, so
much so that people who don't like mayo don't just
dislike it. They hate this stuff. And it's crazy because
it's often an ingredient. I recall years ago, guys, we
were in a conversation with our good friend and former
(03:00):
Paul Mission Control Decand about milk, and he and our
pal Casey Pegram had this ongoing argument about whether milk
is something you drink on its own or whether it
exists only as an ingredient.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, that depends on the person, I guess, you know.
And also I love the trope of villains in movies
drinking milk, like Anton Sugar and No Country for Old Men.
He's just been there because of the condensation on his
glass of milk. Another great use is fastards. Yeah yeah, Also,
(03:41):
and get out the I don't want to spoil it,
but there's a twist where and a character is turns
out to be a real battie is seen eating fruit loops,
I want to say, in milk, and there's something about
like she's picking out certain colors of the fruit loops
to show her inherent racism.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And then there's also of course clockwork orange.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh gosh, there we were sat in a Corova milk
bar acking up our razu ducs of what to do
with the evening.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's so weird because.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's milk plus. By the way, milk plus. Yeah, for
all the droops.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's strange because some people who despise mayonnaise will gladly
consume tartar, sauce, fry sauce, remolade, aoli and well maybe
not aoli. But they'll also eat like chicken salad, tuna salad,
what's the other potato salad?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I like a potato salad, but only if it's made
with sour cream, not a mayo based one. Don't don't
see that. I'm weird, man, I'm weird. I don't like
mayo in certain things. Will not touch a chicken salad,
no matter whether Matthew McConaughey made it or not. No,
I think that's touona salad. But I do love a
good Mayo and I love an aoli. And I think
I was mentioning to you as well, off Mike Ben
that it was when I realized that there were fancy
(05:02):
mayos and mayos that had more flavors that my brain
sort of adapted to the more basic of mayos.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, dude, I appreciate you saying that, because, as we're
going to see in this episode, we are all three,
all four of us, you tuning in at home ridiculous historians.
We're going to have some hot takes on this condiment.
I think restaurant tours figured out you can charge way
more for mayo by jusing it up and calling it aoli.
(05:35):
We'll get to it, but for now, pull up some
Sando bread, start prepping your chicken salad. Don't tell nol
what you're doing it, and let's begin. The first thing
we have to establish here is, guys, mayo is not
as old as I think we all assumed, despite the
(05:55):
fact that as very basic ingredients.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
It is very basic. And then you know a lot
of staple culinary things the French are responsible for, like
a hollandaise sauce or what is a burd blanc you know,
I mean the French responsible for so many basic sauces.
They have a job for it. It's the saucer, the saucier. Indeed,
and while mayo is in fact very basic in terms
(06:18):
of its ingredients, we've got eggs, oil, and again there
are other options for like flavoring and stuff, just some
kind of acid there, you go, some kind of acid,
But it's all about in like how you whip it in,
like the consistency for it to get to the right.
It's not just about slamming all these things together in
a bowl. You got to kind of know what you're
(06:39):
doing to get the right vibe, the right Mayo vibe.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, like that old classic rock band set. You gotta
hold on loosely.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You know, there's an art to it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And we are big sauce fans. That's why we have
this continuing series about condiments. It's no surprise that tons
of salts in use today have ancient roots, like soy sauce, dude,
or olive oil. We established earlier. The ketchup existed for
thousands of years.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Well, much more of a fish sauce kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, yeah, which is why you can get mushroom ketchup
in the UK still, or banana ketchup in the Philippines.
Before the wider world started using tomatoes, ketchup was the thing.
This is not the case with mayonnaise, which is odd, right,
it's kind of recent. Like you said, nol it's an
emulsion of oil, egg yolks, some kind of acid, usually
(07:37):
vinegar or lemon juice. Historians say the earliest footprints of
mayonnaise traced back to Egyptians and Romans because they used
a combination of olive oil and egg as a dietary supplement.
But folks, people did not figure out modern mayo for
(07:58):
a hot minute. Now we got several curdled competing origin stories.
There is a ton of debate about who actually, quote
unquote invented mayonnaise and why we even call it mayonnaise
in the modern day. No, Noel, if you do me
a favorite, I'd like to lean on your French pronunciation
(08:19):
for this first origin story.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I will do my very best here, Ben. This is
one of the ones. That guy that has those upside
down looking letters with the little little lippy hanging guys
on the bottom. I think I got this one. We're
talking about Louis Francois Alman d Vignon de plus is
duco Rischilu, like the cardinal from Three Musketeers. Remember he
was Battie, he was the big bad You nailed it, man,
(08:45):
thank you so much. No, not nailed it, but I
landed in the in the in the vicinity. I have
your French Friday, so kissed it. French kissed it.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
This is the Seven Years War in seventeen fifty six
and the idea is at our pal here led the
French forces to victory in a place called Port Mahol
mho n. This is in the Mediterranean island of Minorca
in Spain, and the story goes it's kind of similar
to the origin story of Ranch.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
As we'll see.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
This guy had a chef, and the chef was preparing
a fancy meal to celebrate the military wins. But lo
and behold, the chef discovered he did not have any
cream for his usual fancy French sauce, so he improvised
and used a mixture of olive oil and eggs instead.
(09:39):
He called this Mahonez after Port Mahol.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
That's so interesting. It's one of those what is it?
Necessity is the mother of invention situations? I guess where
it's like, Oh dear, I have no cream. Let's see
what we've got laying around. Let's just PLoP these guys
together and give it a good whip. And it's cream like.
And yet it's so isn't right? Ben Like It's got
the tang of say, a sour cream, uh, And it
(10:07):
has a similar consistency, but it is so its own thing.
There's nothing else quite like it. And that's what makes
it such a I don't know, like a singular ingredient
that you can't really what do you substitute for mayo?
I guess sour cream would be the closest thing in
my mind, and yet it still doesn't quite fit the bill.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, mayonnaise in the Pantheon of condiments has always.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Of a Campeon of condiments, the gods of condiments. It's
a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's always reminded me of the experience of seeing an
unusual animal for the first time. Like you look at
a giraffe and you think, how'd you get here?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Man, like a platypus and you're like, why, why, why why?
He's got a venomous anal gland or something on a
plats Oh yeah, yeah, thunder is little little little hoot.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yes, I'm sorry, is only egg laying, venomous mammal.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It's a weird guy. Yeah, the platypus. It's a heck
of a remix of therey Go Ben. But no. I
also love the idea of perhaps a Rogues gallery of condiments,
which would probably include stuff like what's that really gross?
One mustardo? Oh? Come on, is it gross? You said it?
Was gross. I thought you didn't like it. I thought
you were the one that was slamming Mustardo, not in
(11:27):
the like yeah, you're like, you know, knocking him back.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, I mean it's not normalized for.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Us, Okay, but it would. I think it would go
in the rogues gallery. I think it would. It would
be the asylum of flipping condiments. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, it's a harlequin and a joker team up for sure.
Max just popped on.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Pop on and a pop off. I can't just say,
isn't it what started?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It's like fuzzy fruit.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It's weird candied almost. It's like mustard candy.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's almost like a like a like a Yeah, it's
mustard fruita spicy mustard and fruit preserves. So it's mustardy
chunky jelling basically. Yeah and off, mic, folks.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
We had a conversation, I guess a year or so
back where we were talking about our favorite condiments and
what should be next in this series. That's where I
was pitching Mustado And yeah, you're right, Noel, I said,
I thought it was gross.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I have tried. I'm looking at it though, Ben. It
almost feels like a chutney mixed with the mustard, which
inherently sounds kind of maybe good, like one of those
papaya dogs you get in New York and then put
a little mustard on there. I think I might be
here for that, but I'm sorry to mean to derail
us talking about an unrelated condiment. But back to Minorca. No,
(12:52):
I think we're moving past Minorca now to the French
city of Bayon.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Ah. Well, there's another version of that same tale, the
Seven Years War, and they will argue that the chef
learned a sauce recipe that pre existed, Salsa mahessa from
the castle On, speaking natives of Minorca. Not everybody agrees
as you're saying. Some French chefs will tell you this
(13:17):
oil and egg mixture was called, as you said, no
baldness from Beyont.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
You got your mayonnaise bayonnais in your holiday inn that
as a really dated hip hop. I love it's got
ham in it, though bits of ham.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, yeah, bail known historically for its ham, not historically
for its ham.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah the region. Rather, I made a mistake. I thought
that their mayonnaise, that mayonnais had a little chunk of ham.
And I'm a goofball sorry about that. No, but the
region is known for sort of like the oh gosh,
what's the right Spanish ham Iberika exactly very similarly notable
ham region.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yes, we love a notable ham like William Shatner or
Matt Berry.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So beyonaise today is going to refer to a mixture
of mayo and a certain type of chili pepper. But
whatever the origin story, this sauce later gets called mayonnaise,
a French term, because of a printing error in a cookbook. So,
fellow etymology nerds, welcome to our weird hangout. Some people
(14:32):
speculate the word mayonnaise comes from the French word manie,
meaning to stir or to blend by hand, or boyeu
meaning yok, like egg yolk. There is a famous dude,
a French chef named Marie Antoine Care. He substituted vegetable
(14:53):
oil for olive oil in his recipe and this was
a game changer. It produced a lighter version of mayonnaise
that became popular throughout Europe, the United States, and as
we'll see the rest of the world. But it's kind
of no Max. It's it's a bit like the origin
of palm free or French fries, you know, rem fries. Yeah, yeah,
(15:17):
Never tell a Belgian that you want to order French fries.
They'll get a little bit saucy with you.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, for sure. French fries is such a colloquialism anyway.
I mean, palm fleets doesn't even translate to French fries. Yeah,
it's just fried potatoes. It's sort of a little bit
presumptuous to go straight to French fries. I've always found
that to be the case, because surely things have been
fried for since time immemorial. Oils have been long a
(15:44):
key staple for you know, cooking things since time immemorial,
whether it be putting it directly into a pan or
a cauldron, or boiling human beings in it. I think
we've long known that oil, when heated up, can can
definitely have a a frying effect. So it does start
to become one of those parallel thinking situations, right, Yeah,
(16:09):
well makes sense. I mean, just to slice up a
potato and throw it in the grease. It's not the
most unique take.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
No, It's like who figured out pants someone at multiple points.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And is already predetermined. All we need to do is
wrap them in fabric, and.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
We call that path dependency in terms of how our
predispositions determine uh the innovations.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
We later create. Well, and a potato has also long
been a staple food stuff because of how resilient it is,
how well it stores. I mean, obviously we know about
the Great Potato Famine, and you know the use of
potatoes in Ireland and how that was such a staple
food there that it was hugely devastating when that famine
took place. But it just makes sense, like I'm the
(16:59):
worst at letting my fresh veggies and fruit rot in
my fridge, but if I buy a bag of potatoes,
you better be rest assured. They might have a few
eyes on them. But you can pop those right off,
pop those babies right off, and good as gold, you can't.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, nice one there, man. We also know side note,
folks that potatoes and tomatoes didn't make it to Europe
for a while. It was part of the Great Transfer.
I love your point about parallel thinking because most historians
(17:40):
are going to argue that these basic ingredients exist around
the world for most of civilization, some kind of egg,
some kind of oil, some kind of acid, and most
historians will also argue that what we call mayonnaise the
way it's created now does date back to Mahome during
(18:02):
the Seven Years War, and the competing theories that largely
come from French culinary historians are kind of they're kind
of adda boys to the French culinary ego. They're invented
after the fact.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
M Yeah. And initially this thing, this sauce, this very
French sort of culinary leaning sauce, was considered pretty high brow.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Oh yeah, yeah, so there is no denying If the
French did not invent mayonnaise, they definitely popularized it, right
Like Chick fil A says, we didn't invent chicken, just
the chicken sandwich.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Very and they didn't invent the chicken sandwich. They didn't, sir.
I guess they're just in blind that theirs just so good.
It constitutes inventing the thing, because all the ones that
came before it were not properly chicken sandwiches.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Was it our waffle House episode where you and I
talked about the Popeye Chick fil A culture war.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
We did a little bit, and we also talked about
how those brands hit a little different in other parts
of the world. Yeah, Popeyes in particular is like such
a novelty, right right, But yeah, the culture we're between
Chick fil A and Popeyes. I think what we did
mention as well on that episode was when that viral
(19:26):
Popeyes chicken sandwich was hitten. Yeah, and people were like
knifing each other over the thing and drive throughs and
they were like running out of it. It was crazy,
you know. I jumped on the train it was a
good chicken sandwich, But that was when they were really
giving Chick fil A a run for their money, and
it probably kicked.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Off some of that Wait, you jumped on the train
of knifing people and running out of drive through.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I jumped on the train of liking that chicken sandwich,
thank you very much, and finding it superior to the
Chick fil a sandwich. Personally, just wanted to clarify for
our listeners, I've never knifed the person the sandwich in
my life.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
As Noel Brown's unqualified lawyer, I will confirm that he
has never, in fact stabbed someone brandish. He has brandished.
We will give the food around wildly. Give your sandwich now,
like you're saying, mayonnaise makes this intercontinental journey to the
(20:14):
United States in the late eighteen hundreds, mid eighteen hundreds,
and as we said, it's very very much a luxury
at this point. It's only served in fancy pants restaurants
like Delmonico's. Have you guys ever been to Delmonico's the
steakhouse in New York City.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Delmonico's the fancy It's one of those fancy the steakhouses
where you get everything a la carte. Right. Radio is
still side, sort of like Musso and Frank in Los
Angeles would be.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
In comparison, that's a great comparison because Delmonico's is at
this point in eighteen thirty eight, they are offering the
well to do the one percenters of the big Apple
h voice of chicken or lobster with mayonnaise, and mayonnaise
is presented on the same level of hollandaise or brene.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Sauce, totally like a fancy sauce exactly. It wasn't until
old Richard Hellman came along. He decided to bring mayonnaise
to the people. Yeah, he thought the mayonnaise off of
that high horse. Yeah, he thought it was high fluting,
and so in our ocritization, Man there we go, he said,
(21:32):
as we imagine in ridiculous history, cinematic universe. He said,
mayo for the people. You guys are too fancy.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And he opened a deli with his family in nineteen
twelve in New York City, and they prepared mayonnaise at home.
They used it as a binding material for all sorts
of different salads, the kind of salads you don't care for,
like chicken, tuna, so on. And they would serve these
dishes at the deli. This is so similar to the
(22:04):
idea of ranch, right. They would serve the things at
the deli, and the mayo eventually overshadowed the salad. So
by the nineteen twenties, customers are going up to Helman
and they're saying, hey, man, can I just can't just
get straight up mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Let me get a.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Taste, Let me just get a little spoon, Let me
hit that mayo. Come on, let me hit that mayo.
I don't need the chicken, I don't want the tuna.
I want just the straight up mayonnaise. And Richard's not
too precious. He and his spouse start manufacturing mayonnaise in Bolk.
This is the origin story of Helman's mayo.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah. I love this detail that they initially their packaging
was made of wood. Yeah. Yeah, it was a different time. Yeah,
that's weird and no time. However, they did switch to
the glass jars that we know and love today. I
suppose I'm more of a duke's guy, but we'll get
to that. Around nineteen twenty five he sold two versions
(23:08):
of the stuff. He used a blue ribbon to mark
one of them. Was the implication here that it had
won some sort of mayonnaise prize. Yeah, just like like
half blue ribbon the beer. Do you think self proclaimed
blue ribbon sort of thing, and that that logo is
still what you see on the jars today. What was
the other version?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
The other version wasn't also ran like, you will know
you're in a creepy place if they will differentiate between
the trash beer they serve you, Okay, the paps blue
ribbon or just paps.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
It was like, yeah, fair enough. So we got the
blue ribbon version and then the like drec version.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
I guess it's whatever's left over at the bottom of
the mixing mixing bowl.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I don't know, I don't know, Okay, don't need need
none of that let's stick with the blue ribbons. So
demand did start growing. They did status established a factory
for making the stuff, uh in Astoria or again. But
Hellman's wasn't the only jarred mayonnaise that was starting to
hit the market. We've got the also very humbly named
(24:18):
Best Foods, which also was selling a pre made version
of mayo over on the West coast Civic Northwest. I
suppose so they this was you know, competition for sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, and then we see monopolization right in nineteen twenty
seven Post Them Cereal Company, which is the predecessor of
General Foods. They did Post Them Cereal Company become Post.
I think that's a good question. What do we have
still alive.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
On a second posting, you know, in a Cereal company?
Is it posts? Survey says yes. Post Them was created
by CW. Post and is the original product that came
the Post Cereal company.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Okay, from my serial research from a number of years ago,
I found out that Post was a real pill. He
was a interesting All the Ceial guys, as we know,
the Kelloggs were interested.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Post himself was at.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Just like putting stuff up with people's butts.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Well that was the.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Other John Harvey. You know, they were both kind of
you know, but the weirder Kellogg was not the main
serial kellog.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Okay, I always got that I got those wires crossed,
and I don't the guy ever uncrossed them.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
I always wonder what it would have been like hanging
out with them both at once. One of them would
have said, I have opinions about grains, and the other
one would say, I have opinions about yogurt in the
worst possible way, I'll.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Tell you where to stick your grains. You know who
would have really gotten along with John Harvey Kellogg? Who
r f K jor uh Max.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
We got to catch you up on this. We resent
catch you up on this. We recently discovered that the
current US political official RFK Junior has engaged with ai
chatbots for nutritional advice to people in the United States.
(26:20):
And one of the things that this AI chatbot will
do is advise you on the most healthy vegetables to
put up your butt.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Mm hmm, and we put forth that the root ones
are probably the best option because of the shape.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
This AI chatbot help also help them with his poetry.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Oh man, this is a p show. We can't get
although that would have been right at home in the
what was it, James Joyce? Oh gosh, poetry?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Oh my gosh, guys, I just in the field. I
got in another argument about Finnegan's Wake.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I've got to stop doing it. And it's not good.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I I think it's beyond good and evil. Okay, Wow,
it is a series of letters purporting to be a
novel or.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
English Okay, so it's just it's some musings.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It's come on, I can't catch strays on this one. Guys,
my professor are still alive. You don't want to You
don't want to get in front of that freight.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Train, Ben, Yeah, mayonnaise does become We're getting to the
point where it's about to become a bit of a craze,
where we start to see like mayonnaise cookbooks with just
absolutely disgusting imagery, like when you posted year uh incorporating
mayonnaise with another fad food, gelatine, Yes, to create just
(27:50):
these monstrosities of culinary despicableness. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
By this point, Postum serial has a fired Best Foods
and Helman's Mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
The aforementioned monopoly.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yes, so now we've got a what is it Carls
Junior and Hardy's kind of thing? Theo cartel, a mayo cartel.
I love it, dude. So best food mayonnaise is sold
in the western US, while Helman's is sold east of.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
The Rocky Mountains. To your point bend, that's exactly right,
the Carls Junior versus Hardy's, the Checkers versus Rallies. You know,
there are basically the same exact restaurants that like to
brand themselves differently depending on what that part of the
country is more used to.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And we want to give a special shout out to
Duke's Mayo.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I do like a Duke's. Yeah, I'm a Duke's guy.
I don't know why. I'd be very curious to do
an ab taste test to see if it really is better.
But somewhere along the line, I got sold on Dukes
being superior to Helman's.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
That's because of where we spent our formative years. That's
what it is, son, Yeah, it's Dukes is a very
popular brand right in the American South, and there are
countless mayo alternatives catering to vegans vegetarians. You know you
got your eggless mayo, You've got stuff for folks with
allergies and so on, and this is almost a different episode.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
But Noel, you nailed it. Man.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
People have done a lot of weird stuff with mayonnaise, especially,
I want to say, in like the post World War
two environment, right, everything is gelatine and mayonnaise, and how
can we combine these? What can we put in there?
I just can't imagine eating mayo jello. I think I
(29:44):
maybe have mentioned before, and we've definitely.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Done an episode if you just do a little search
on like gelatin based fad foods and this kind of thing.
My mother was really fond of something that her other
was really fond of. So it's one of these generational
disgusting desserts that you have to make it every dinner party.
Something called Gentleman's salad well in and of itself, sounds
(30:10):
fricking disgusting, Like I mean, sorry, not to be too ichy,
be right. And I don't even know. I'm gonna google
it because I don't even know if my mom just
made this up or her mom made it out. Yeah,
it's fine, No, it's no, this is it's it's here.
Grandma's lime green jello salad recipe with cottage cheese and
(30:32):
jello and pineapple. It's like this gelatinous green loaf that
has like horseradish sauce on it and like mayo in
it and lime green jello and it is and cottage cheese.
It's just the worst. And my mom would always make
it in honor of her mom. Evaporated milk, pineapple, lime jello, mayonnaise,
(30:55):
cottage cheese, and walnuts. Yeah, well sorry.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Also, I love I love how sketchy any any food
sounds when you add gentleman's to the front of it.
When you add that possessive we see gentlemen's scoundrels pasta salad.
I can't remember if I told you, guys, I I
went down this rabbit hole and I ordered something called
(31:19):
Gentleman's relish.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Is that mustardo? It was during the mustarto phase. It is.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
It's like an anchovy paste basically, but it's GM's relish,
gentleman's relish, gentleman's salad. That just sounds gentleman's scoundrel. Come on,
a scoundrel, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
This doesn't quite make sense grammatically, though, Like what is
that a gentleman to be the scoundrel. This is a
scoundrel that belongs to the gentleman.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, he's a dirty rascal, or he's like a familiar
like in that in that Steve Martin film, what was it?
Dirty rotten scoundrel? So you run scoundrel, It sounds like
a cod man's pasta. So the gentleman's scoundrel would be
that you got the judge, your gentleman, and then his
partner who is the real rogue they're doing the crime,
and then the gentleman's the one that sort of the
(32:10):
straight man of the of the duo. And maybe mayonnaise
is in that rogues gallery, right, maybe mayonnaise is the
scoundrel of condiments. There was one guy from Japan who
absolutely fell in love with the idea of mayonnaise. Tochiro
(32:34):
Nakashima nineteen ten, he's an intern dude.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
An intern at Japan's Department of Agriculture and Commerce, and
he went to the UK and the US and he,
just like you said, just got just drowned himself in mayo.
He returned with a fascination for the white stuff as
well as orange. Marmalade was popular with the Paddington Bears
of the world and mayo and you use it to
(32:59):
make potato salad. And so this guy was like a real,
real mad scientist of flavor. You describe him very aptly
been as a Willy Wonka of what we call today.
This is also a tease for the next episode We're
gonna do, by the way, a QB mayonnaise, which is
so cool, if only in the way that it's packaged.
If you go to the cool Asian food specialty food stores,
(33:21):
it comes in like a like a plastic tube like
you would use to decorate a cake. It looks like
you're buying an action figure, you know. Also true, Yeah,
it doesn't. It come like in like a like a
like a kind of like a plastic bag. Almost.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, it has a plastic bag around the harder plastic container.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
There you go of the mayonnaise, and it's.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
A little bit sweeter than say your dukes or your helmets.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And much like a lot of Japanese products, the branding
is just adorable. You got a little baby, a little
naked baby with a little dippity dew hair, you know,
swoop on the top and yeah, it really does hit.
It's it's used in it is let's put it this way,
it is a feature. When it is used in a dish,
it is described as almost like a little some extra.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yeah, and given some lactose restrictions in that part of
the world, mannaise will often replace what people would use
dairy for, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And the big difference that made this thing so umami
and rich was the fact that it only used the
yolks of the egg rather than the whole thing. And also,
of course the proprietary blend of vinegars, including rice vinegar
which is much milder, and apple cider vinegar, which I
think ben would give it some of that sweetness that
you're accounting for. Oh, that's a good call. We know that.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
According to the QP Mayo website, our buddy Tochiro makes
this in nineteen twenty five to quote help improve the
physiques and health of Japanese people by making delicious tricius
mayonnaise so widely available that it becomes a daily necessity. Anyway,
(35:06):
as you said, egg yolk's science vinegar, maybe we talked
a little bit about the science of mayonnaise, and let's
break down the aoli thing like mayonnaise is an emulsion.
It's things that shouldn't usually.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Hang out together, right, and that therein lies the key
of how they're it's whipped and how it's combined to
create that emulsion. If I'm not mistake. And by the way,
just a quick add on QP another key ingredient MSG.
Just putting that and we talked about the demonization of MSG.
I think it has seen a bit of a reassessment
and it is basically just a flavor additive that adds
(35:42):
a little bit of that new mommy as opposed to
the way it was demonized in order to other American
Chinese restaurants.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right check out our episode on Chinese restaurants in the
United States. MSG is short for monosodium glutamate and it
is delicious.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
And another thing about QP two is you'll find that
it's a bit yellower, which is what you're gonna get
when you're making a real fancy mayo an aoli like
the the absolute ghost whiteness of prepackaged and mass marketed mayo.
It's not what it's going to look like. If you
make up a batch yourself, it's gonna have you know,
(36:24):
those egg yolks are gonna show and it's gonna be
a little more yellow, and that is maybe what people
might typically refer to as an aoli.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And as an off putting color. Right, people are very
sensitive to color when they're eating something.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
You think white is way grosser than yellow.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
You know, man, as a partially color blind person, I
would defer to you.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, it's just I mean, I think it's a personal,
you know, taste thing, for sure. But when I think
of when I see a yellow or mayo, I feel
like it's fresher. I feel like it's made with real
eggs because it's imparted that, you know, Hugh.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Now, a lot of people would say that they feel
a yellowed mayonnaise is older, right, has maybe been in
the sun, has maybe gotten That's a good point, then
close to expire.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Maybe this is me just getting over science effection. But
it's got kind of a snot.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Light like look to it. O said, don't make I
told you I just came around to mayo in my
late thirties. Well, don't do this to me.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Let's get ready, folks to dive into some science. So again,
an emulsion two things that shouldn't usually hang out. If
you just pour oil into a bowl and then you
pour water into a bowl. You will see that they segregate.
They stay separate, and no matter how oil and water right, yeah,
(37:49):
we even have a phrase for it. So no matter
how ardently or vigorously or how long you stir, those
two liquids will eventually go away from each other, and
the oil is going to float at the top, the
water is going to go at the bottom. So why
does mayonnaise work?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Now?
Speaker 1 (38:09):
At this point we have established that two key ingredients
of mayonnaise don't hang out together. We need a hero
and our hero in. This is the humble egg.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
The hero egg of today's story, like the hero pig
in that episode of Nathan for you. So, the egg
has a very specific molecule in it that I was
not particularly aware. I've called less ethan ain let go
the sound lessothin, which is the emulsifier in the equation.
(38:51):
This is the thing that allows those two things that
normally would not mix to be bound together. Yeah, like
our super producer, Max, that is a good point. Max
is quite there, the great emulsifier, Williams.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So you make mayonnaise by combining eggs and vinegar, and
then as you whisked to your earlier point, Noal you
can't add the oil all at once.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
You got to hold on loosely.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
You get a few drops in at a time while whisking.
This is going to be familiar to any chefs in
the crowd or home cooks. You have to do this
over time. You have to distribute those oil molecules evenly
into what will become your mayonnaise. If you pour too
much or if you whisk like an amateur, you're going
(39:43):
to break the mayo.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah. Also, I've often referred to as splitting, Like if
a sauce is splits, then you have whisked it poorly
or just not done it correctly in terms of the
rate at which you add the oil. And so you're
gonna get some splitting. And that usually manifested itself in
terms of seeing clumps and oil rising to the top,
(40:05):
and it's just not having that consistency that you want
and emulsified liquid like that.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, because of the chemistry involved, it's incredibly difficult, essentially
impossible to salvage your mayo if you break it or
if you split it. Noel, before we go, we've got
to We've got a whisk together. Some hot takes, all right,
we joked a little bit about aoli in the beginning,
(40:34):
I have often accused aoli of being nothing more than
a bit of marketing to make things more expensive. And
I want to apologize to you and Max for complaining
about Tapa's earlier, because remember I went through that phase
where I was super against Tapa's. I said, they're just
(40:54):
appetizers with a different word. Cheese sticks should be five dollars,
not seventeen dollars. Aoli is just a way to get
people to pay more for mayonnaise than they should.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know, it's funny, Ben. While those terms are today
often used super interchangeably, historically aoli is a little different.
It doesn't actually have eggs in it. It is more
of a Mediterranean sauce, like a satziki kind of where
it's garlic and oil. It's a garlic and oil emulsion. Well,
mayo is an egg and oil emulsion, but they are
(41:26):
They do kind of, you know, result in a very
similar tasting and appearing, you know, condiment, But aoli is
typically a little more pungent since it's got that garlic.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, it's a traditional condiment in province and Catalonia, right,
So true, aoli, to your point, is also an emulsion.
It's a little bit more time intensive to create olive
oil and garlic. So if you are looking at a
menu in God Save You or Tapa's restaurant, when you
(42:00):
see something that says garlic aoli, please know that is
super DUP's redundant. It's like saying vin number or ATM machine.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
It really is. Yeah. Garlic is the key ingredient of
what makes the aoli. That is one of the two
things that create the emulsion or that are emulsified together.
Aoli gets its creamy consistency in that pale color from
emulsifying those two ingredients with a bit of course salt added.
Because garlic doesn't have strong and multifying properties like egg yolk,
(42:31):
it does take a ton more effort to properly emulsify
olive oil into the garlic. So one the last thing
we got to do it.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
It's like making a resultant, yeah yeah, or making a
Holidays Right, We've got to give a shout out to
a phrase that I think we all are fascinated by.
Back in twenty eighteen, US media got in a huge
hubub for something called identity condiments. Do you guys remember
(43:04):
like identity politics, yes, dude, the culture war, I kind
of don't. I mean, I guess I've always associated or seen.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
That line of Mayo being like white people food, you know,
or like it's just Mayo's too spicy for that, Karen,
you know things like that, right, is that what we're
talking about. It came about due.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
To a decline in mayonnaise sales. Right during a period
of time where a lot of younger people like us,
we're struggling to have a job, dreaming to buy the house,
or dreaming of being able to afford going to a restaurant.
Mayonnaise sales dipped and the establishment media said that millennials
(43:51):
were killing mayonnaise. That turns out to be a little
bit overblown. And I don't know about you guys, but
I suspect Big Mayo had a hand in that culture war.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Maybe so, yeah, maybe so. I mean, you know, a
product like that that has just been around for such
a long time, and like the main players are still
kind of the first to market, you know, from the
olden days. You gotta shake things up from time to time. Sure, yeah,
and we hope make manufacture a little controversy there we go,
(44:26):
get your product back in the news have a.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Manufactured beef, right like celebrities that secretly love each other.
Here we are at the end of the history of mayonnaise,
looking boldly to the future in terms of all sorts
of condiment combinations like fry sauce or remember when I
think it was Heines did that thing where they started
(44:49):
making maychup or mayo chup. They started, Yeah, they started buying.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Okay, I stasically fry sauce, right, I do say gross
only because we're is weird mayo chuck. I don't like
the way that sounds.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Sounds like a but it sounds like a not good pokemon.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
I agree, But I do like, you know, a classic
burger sauce is so you can make that up with
a combination of mayo and a little ketchup and a
little smoke paprika, for example. There's different ways of doing it.
But if you ever see like sort of a pinkish
burger sauce that's pre sold, it sometimes has chunks of
pickle in it, which sounds gross as well, but it's
(45:27):
really good. I really like that a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
So where do we land in terms of one of
the most divisive condiments in the modern World Mayo. Yes, no,
for it, against it.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I'm for it, heavily for it.
Speaker 4 (45:44):
And I want to toss that in here because he's
kind of part of the show as well, one of
the biggest Mayo fans I've ever met.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Alex Williams, he loved me.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Thank you to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Thank
you to Alex Mayo Williams, who can pull this track?
What do you think about Jonathan Strickland?
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Is he a Mayo guy?
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:10):
I wonder if he rubs it on his bald head
at night to try to regross. There isn't there? Haven't
there been discussions of Mayo as like a cure all
as well, like rubbing it on your body? Did I
make that up? I think I might have made that up, y'all.
Sorry to end on such a gross note. We love you, Jonathan.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Oh yeah, Jonathan Strickland aka the Quiztor, thank you and
we look forward to Jonathan returning soon. A j Bahama's Jacobs,
who else.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Well, Gosh, Chris frasciotis and he's Jeff Coat and spirit
of course, the rude is a ridiculous crime. If you
dig us, you're gonna dig them, as well as Rachel
big S Finish Lands, the Doctor herself of Underwater Explosion
and Noel. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I hope everybody has enjoyed this exploration as much as
I have. And Max, we gotta fix the condition. You said,
it's the vinegar that eighty six is the Mayo for.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
You and the address.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Let's see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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