Home › Luncheon › Mazola Mayonnaise
Mazola Mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon Karo, Red Label 1 egg 3 tablespoons vinegar 2 cups Mazola Put the seasonings in a small deep bowl, beat in the egg, add the vinegar, stir until mixed and gradually beat in the Mazola, using a wheel egg beater. Start with one-half teaspoon oilwhen the mayonnaise has begun to thicken, add it a tablespoonful at a time. When done, beat in one tablespoon boiling water.
A branded emulsion recipe from a corn-products promotional booklet, and a sound one — the method still works exactly as printed. Two details need translating and one needs watching.
- The hinge: oil rateThe emulsion forms or fails in the first minute. Add oil half a teaspoon at a time until the mixture visibly thickens and gains a satin sheen, and only then move to tablespoons, exactly as the recipe directs. Rushing the start is the commonest cause of a broken batch.
- MazolaCorn oil, then and now, and the reason the recipe exists. Any neutral oil behaves the same; a full 2 cups of corn oil gives a firm, pale mayonnaise with no olive flavour.
- Karo, Red LabelKaro was sold in several labelled grades, Red Label being the darker, fuller-flavoured one and Blue Label the light. Corn syrup is the nearest thing on the shelf today, and at 1 teaspoon per 2 cups of oil its job is a faint rounding of the vinegar rather than sweetness — a pinch of sugar does much the same work.
- Wheel egg beaterA rotary hand beater. A balloon whisk works, as does a hand mixer on medium. A blender or food processor also works but changes the texture, giving a stiffer, whiter sauce.
- The boiling waterNot an afterthought. A tablespoon of boiling water beaten in at the end loosens the sauce slightly and is traditionally held to help the emulsion hold together in the refrigerator.
- Egg safetyThe egg is never heated, and 3 tablespoons of vinegar in this volume will not sterilise it. Use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised.
- Temperature and yieldEgg, vinegar and oil should all be at room temperature; cold oil separates readily. The recipe makes roughly 2 1/2 cups — generous for a luncheon salad — and keeps three or four days covered and chilled.
- If it breaksStart a fresh egg in a clean bowl and beat the split mixture into it drop by drop, as though it were the oil. Nothing is lost.
This comes from a booklet published by the makers of Mazola and Karo, part of a wave of manufacturer cookbooks that appeared in the early twentieth century to teach American cooks what to do with new industrial ingredients. Corn oil and corn syrup were both refinery products of the corn-milling boom, and both needed a use: hence a mayonnaise recipe in which two of the six ingredients carry brand names and one of them, the teaspoon of Karo, is doing almost nothing a pinch of sugar could not. The pitch was that a bland, cheap, domestically produced seed oil made better mayonnaise than imported olive oil but for for a pale all-purpose salad dressing, largely true. The instruction to finish with boiling water is a period touch that has quietly dropped out of most modern recipes.