Which came first the Mayonnaise or the Aioli

The birth of Mayonnaise is one of the many kitchen fables that get told. There are other fantastical food tales too – How a group of nuns combined new world ingredients with Old World spices to create the chocolate laden Mole Oaxaca in honor of a Bishop’s visit. Or Madeleines, gumbo, General Tso’s Chicken; the problem with all these (food) creation stories is they are apocryphal at best.

The Mahon account of the birth of Mayonnaise turns up in a more than few books and dictionaries – because all the usual suspects are there – military action, nobility, an occasion worthy of celebration, my suspicion is piqued…Not to get all Howard Zinn about [stuff] but people were eating meat between 2 pieces of bread long before John Montagu, better known as the 4th Earl of Sandwich ‘invented’ his namesake food in the mid-1700s. Just as the Sandwich Islands not only existed, but were populated had a cultural identity long before Captain Cook named what is again known as Hawaii after his Sandwich lovin’ patron.

So, I respectfully disagree with my Saucycolleague on this issue. People were eating aioli long before the blander mayonnaise was popularized. The fact aioli didn’t appear in print until after Mayonnaise, means little. The Occitan dialects of the Southwestern Europe were spoken languages – some regional languages like the Basque didn’t have alphabets assigned to them until the late 19th century. French was (excuse me for this) the Lingua Franca - the language of commerce, court and records. Local patois such as Provencal, were, well, viewed as provincial, as were its foods and customs. The fact that no one wrote down the word aioli – ai meaning garlic; oli designates oil – doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Lack of a paper trail doesn’t apply to spoken dialects - That is like contending the English Pilgrims discovered squash because the Narragansett hadn’t written it down first.

Of all the Provencal/Catalan cooks over all the centuries with access to eggs, garlic and locally produced olive oil, makes it very (way) probable that at some point, someone figured out that eggs helped thicken garlic and oil into a sauce. This happened long before the Brits were repelled at Port Mahon. It is more likely when French aristocracy descend upon Mahon for its defense, they were exposed to aioli and took it back to Versailles as the sauce of Mahon – From there it was blanded up for to the sensitive Royal constitutions (or without value judgment: adapted for local ingredients). That is far more probable than cooks inventing a sauce in the heat of a battle, out of army rations.

As for Richard Olney saying ‘aioli is garlic mayonnaise’; that isn’t a declarative statement contending mayo came before the aioli. That too is how I would describe aioli to someone who was unfamiliar with garlic and olive oil emulsion. Escoffier was not a kitchen innovator, as much as a culinary taxonomist - he compiled and organized what was already existed, Carolus Linneaus in a toque. The fact that Escoffier designated mayonnaise a mother sauce, something neutral enough to be the base of other sauces, is actually another way of saying, mayo is devoid of personality.

While Charlie is wise to point out Caesar Dressing made from mayo is wrong – I attempted to give an example of a thick, rich egg bound salad dressing, doing so, I gave the impression that mayo is the base of Caesar, it is not, nor should be. The Olney quote about food processors and good olive oil is true, why buy the good oil if you are going to ruin by overheating and aerating it in a Cuisinart. As for the rest of it – Mayonnaise on Salmon? Maybe, possibly you can justify ruining the lowly potato with mayo but why destroy an expensive fish with a cheap ingredient? Then again everything you need to know about his affection for mayonnaise comes from his own voluntary admission that he adds mayo to ham sandwiches – a love whose name we dare not speak.

Here is a question for the next Cold Cut Chronicles – a good artisan sausage – does mayonnaise make it better?