How to make mayonnaise with a cooked yolk?

Question

I have heard of mayonnaise made with cooked yolks before, but was suspicious of it. Now a user posted another question with a link to a recipe which shows the making steps. It shows the making a mayonnaise with a hard boiled yolk, emulsifying 150 ml of oil with a single yolk (and as far as I can tell, no additional liquid - the text is in Romanian). The mayonnaise in the picture looks nicely emulsified and smooth.

How is boiled-yolk-mayo made? What is the best ratio? Should I follow a different method than with raw yolk? How different is the result from normal mayonnaise?

Asked by rumtscho

Answer

I went ahead and tried it. I used hard-boiled yolks, as a soft and slimy one would be not really different from making the mayo in a waterbath. It turned out to be incredibly fickle.

The first try, only yolk and oil, with immersion blender, split immediately and never recovered. The second try was supposed to incorporate the bad emulsion. I first made a paste from the yolk with a few milliliters of lemon juice and water, then started adding the bad emulsion, beating with a mixer this time. I got a thick suspension of yolk particles in oil, but it wasn't emulsified.

The third try worked at first. Again, I started with yolk and water and lemon juice, and then added the oil in really tiny amounts, half a teaspoonful at once. I used the mixer again. It emulsified, but was runny. I kept adding oil, and it was a nice emulsion, but very soft, runnier than soft peaks, like a batter. And then, one of the teaspoons of oil broke the emulsion completely :(

I don't know how the emulsion in the picture is made, maybe the sources I have heard of forget to mention that the yolk shouldn't be hard boiled (mine was longer boiled than the one in the forum picture). If this is the case, then obviously there is nothing unusual happening here - the yolk retains some of its emulsifying power even after boiling (I suppose it is the lecithine), but many of the substances which are actively helping the emulsion when heated around 70°C don't work any more. So, working with cooked yolks is possible, but much harder than the normal heated raw yolks. Which makes me think that there is no reason to try further to use cooked yolks.

I can't comment on taste, didn't try the emulsion before it split. After splitting, the yolk-containing oil is still usable as a bread dip, but doesn't taste well enough to be made on purpose.

Answered by rumtscho

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Why condiments expiry date is rounded?

Question

Many condiments such as katchup, mayonnaise and mustard (where I live at least) seem to love rounding all of their expiry dates to "60 days after opened".

Thing is, I never see any difference after the date, at least with mustard. It's easy to consume katchup or mayo under a couple of months, but I only like mustard for very few things, so I have some black mustard from ~3-4 months that tastes just as good.

What is weird to me is that they round the expiry dates. Are they just lazy and think "nah, nobody takes more than two months and it should last that long"?

Asked by Camilo Martin

Answer

Food quality isn't binary; it doesn't go from perfectly good to perfectly bad in an instant. Even if it did, the time it would take depends on the storage temperature. And for non-liquid foods, it's possible that only a part went bad (how well does it mix?).

So, you don't get a precise date, but a rough interval at which time the decay starts to set in. As a result, the manufacturer will just pick a rounded date from that interval.

Example: the engineers might calculate that under reasonable circumstances, the product may start to noticably deteriorate after 52-75 days, and become dangerous after 81-112 days. They manufacturer could then say that the expiry date would be 60 days.

(The other answers explain why you'd use the first interval, but not why they're actually intervals.)

Answered by MSalters

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Mayonnaise substitute in cake batter

Question

My wife's chicken cake recipe calls for mayonnaise as one of the batter ingredients. In my opinion, mayonnaise is completely unsuitable for high-temperature processing (as in baking), but I was unable to come up with a substitute for it.

So, my question is, what can we put into cake batter instead of mayonnaise?

Update:

I think mayonnaise is unsuitable for baking because it is an emulsion which separates into its ingredients when heated, emulsifying agents used in a commercial mayo are not particularly healthy, and mayonnaise does not taste any good when it is broken into its components.

The components of the batter are: 6 table spoons of flour, 3 eggs, 200gram mayo, 200gram sour cream.

The components of the filling are: chopped prepared chicken meat, chopped sauteed onions, boiled eggs, etc.

Answer

Many cake batters call for mayonnaise. It makes for moister cakes. Using mayonnaise instead of its constituent ingredients adds convenience as well as extra emulsifiers. It is true that mayonnaise doesn't handle high heat on its own but it doesn't have to. It is part of a batter that will set.

If you really don't trust the recipe- the mayonnaise can be replaced with egg yolks that have oil whipped into them to form an emulsion. You can add a little vinegar for flavor. :)

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Mayonnaise substitute in cake dough

Question

My wife's chicken cake recipe calls for mayonnaise as one of the dough ingredients. In my opinion, mayonnaise is completely unsuitable for high-temperature processing (as in baking), but I was unable to come up with a substitute for it.

So, my question is, what can we put into cake dough instead of mayonnaise?

Update:

I think mayonnaise is unsuitable for baking because it is an emulsion which separates into its ingredients when heated, emulsifying agents used in a commercial mayo are not particularly healthy, and mayonnaise does not taste any good when it is broken into its components.

The components of the dough is: 6 table spoons of flour, 3 eggs, 200gram mayo, 200gram sour cream. The components of the filling are: chopped prepared chicken meat, chopped sauteed onions, boiled eggs, etc.

Answer

Many cake batters call for mayonnaise. It makes for moister cakes. Using mayonnaise instead of its constituent ingredients adds convenience as well as extra emulsifiers. It is true that mayonnaise doesn't handle high heat on its own but it doesn't have to. It is part of a batter that will set.

If you really don't trust the recipe- the mayonnaise can be replaced with egg yolks that have oil whipped into them to form an emulsion. You can add a little vinegar for flavor. :)

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How to balance out sourness of lemon juice, specifically in a mayonnaise?

Question

I've just made some mayonnaise, and it's turned out fine - texture wise. However, I used too much lemon juice when I made it. What are the possible ways to balance this out, mellowing the 'zing'? It's not terribly overmuch, but it could definately stand for a bit less.

Recipe used:

• 1 egg yolk
• 1.5 dl oil
• Juice from 1/3 lemon
• Salt n pepper

Can I go with some honey, or will this simply make it disgusting? I realize this wouldn't neutralize the sourness, but simply mask it. Any ideas? :)

Answer

To balance acidity, add sugar. It's how most mayonnaise manages to be acidic enough to prevent bacteria growth (pH 4.6 or lower), while still having a balanced and edible flavor.

You might get an edible result with honey, but sugar is more of a neutral flavor, so I would use that first. Using a jigger of Dijon mustard is not beyond the pale, as well... might help hide the acid, to a lesser extent.

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How do I get rid of mayonnaise smell?

Question

Today for the first time, I tested classic egg mayonnaise. All I can say that it smelled strongly like yeast!

Is there a way to get rid of that smell? Do mayonnaise in general have that smell?

Enlighten please.

Answer

The strongest smells in mayonnaise should be vinegar and egg. There shouldn't be any yeast, and therefore any yeast smell, so that is a bit concerning. I am not sure what might imitate a yeast smell.

I don't know how to counter the smell since I am not sure what the origination of the smell is. Does it taste okay? Is the texture okay? I do find that homemade and store brand mayonnaises have pretty different smells in general.

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What makes store brand mayo white?

Question

So, I've finally accomplished making mayo. But it has a yellowish hue to it, obviously this is the case because of the egg yolks.

My question is this: Why is store mayo white? What makes it white?

I'm fine with mine being the color it is, but now it's driving me crazy as why it's white in the stores. Is it a preservative thing? Is it an appearance thing?

Answer

Short answer: store mayonnaise has less yolks per volume oil, and yolks give most of the yellow color.

Mainly the reason is that store mayonnaise adds water, rather than relying on the moisture in the egg yolks and vinegar. To quote On Food and Cooking, page 634:

Though cookbooks often say that the ratio of oil to egg yolk is critical, that one can only emulsify a half-cup or cup of oil, this isn't true. A single yolk can emulsify a dozen cups of oil or more. What is critical is the ratio of oil to water: there must be enough of the continuous phase for the growing population of oil droplets to fit into.

This means you can use less yolks and just add water to get your volume. Since yolks impart most of the yellow color (from plant pigments called xanthophylls), this reduces color considerably.

Store mayonnaise also uses some whole eggs, not just yolks, which do not emulsify as well, but are cheaper. This further reduces the amount of yolk in the result. Note that while home mayonnaises use yolks, store mayonnaises can get away with including egg whites by using very powerful machines to emulsify the mayonnaise, and in some cases add emulsifiers such as lecithin to help stabilize it.

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The Experiment!

One whole, very jumbo egg, with a little white wine vinegar (around 15 mL). For oil, I used vegetable oil with a small splash of olive oil. The total amount of oil used was 1.5 cups, or 350 mL.

First, I tried to create mayonnaise by hand whipping with a mini-whisk. It turned out a pale yellow, and thickened some, but refused to thicken fully. This confirms that making a homemade mayonnaise by hand requires yolks or some sort of mechanical beating/blending; whole eggs just don't emulsify well enough. It's fair to say that the result is quite yellow when it isn't fully blended.

Next, I gave it a shot with my immersion blender:

See how much lighter and paler the mayonnaise is! I can only speculate that the blender created a much finer emulsion, and incorporated more air, reducing the impact of the oil and yolk color on light scattered off the micro-droplets.

Finally, I went ahead and added flavorings (a little dijon mustard, a ton of paprika, salt, pepper, and more vinegar). In this comparison against commercial mayonnaise, you can see that the result is now darker and more orange, courtesy of the paprika. It is also clear how close the color was before adding paprika.

Clearly, the use of whole eggs is the biggest part of the equation. It is clear that by adding more water to thin the emulsion and then adding oil to achieve the proper consistency, I could make this even paler, very close to store mayonnaise. The use of mechanical blenders may assist in the process, producing a finer and paler emulsion.

Recipes that include paprika also yield a more yellow-orange result; I think it is for this reason that my commercial mayonnaise uses "paprika oleoresin" in place of ground paprika.

Finally, the use of more heavily colored olive oil appears to darken the resulting mayonnaise. Given how bland my mayonnaise was with only a touch of olive oil, I would encourage you to blend in water and additional oil, rather than avoiding the olive oil. Ideally, the water would be added about a tsp at a time, when the mayonnaise is still somewhat liquid.

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