Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil droplets suspended in a base compound of egg yolk, lemon juice and/or vinegar, water and often mustard, which provides both flavor and stabilizing particles and carbohydrates. It’s the sauce most tightly packed with oil droplets – as much as 80% of its volume by oil- and is usually dense and too stiff to pour. It can be thinned and flavored with various water-based liquids, including purees and stocks, or it can enrich such liquids the way cream does; it can also be aerated with the addition of whipped cream or egg whites. As a room temperature preparation, mayonnaise is generally served with cold dishes of various sorts. But thanks to the yolk proteins, it also reacts usefully to heat. It lends body and richness when added to thin broths and briefly cooked; when layered onto fish or vegetables and broiled, it moderates the heat, puffs up and sets into a rich coating.

Traditionally, mayonnaise is made with raw egg yolks, and therefore carries a slight risk of salmonella infection. Manufacturers use pasteurized egg yolks, and cooks concerned with salmonella can now find pasteurized eggs in the supermarkets. Both vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil kill bacteria, but mayonnaise is best treated as a highly perishable product that should be served immediately or kept refrigerated.

Making Mayonnaise

All of the ingredients for making mayonnaise should be at room temperature; warmth speeds the transfer of emulsifiers from the yolk particles to the oil droplet services. The simplest method is to mix together everything but the oil- egg yolks, lemon juice and/or vinegar, salt, mustard, garlic – and then whisk in the oil, slowly at first and more rapidly as the yolk thickens. However, the cook can produce more stable small droplets by whisking a portion of the oil into just the yolks and salt to start and then adding the remaining ingredients when the emulsion gets stiff and needs to be thinned. The salt causes the yolk granules to fall apart into its component particles, which makes the yolks become both more clear and more viscous. If left undiluted, this viscosity will help break the oil into smaller droplets.

Though cookbooks often say that the ratio of egg yolk to oil is critical, that one egg yolk can only emulsify a half-cup or cup of oil, that is simply not 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. For every volume of oil added, the cook should provide a third of that volume in the combination of yolks, lemon juice, vinegar, water or some other water-based liquid.

As a base for other sauces

·         Ranch dressing is made of buttermilk or sour cream, mayonnaise, and minced green onions, along with other seasonings.

·         Rouille is aïoli with added saffron, red pepper or paprika.

·         Sauce rémoulade, in classic French cuisine is mayonnaise to which has been added mustard, gherkins, capers, parsley, chervil, tarragon, and possibly anchovy essence.[13] An industrially made variety is popular in Denmark with French fries and fried fish. It is quite different from most of the remoulade sauces that are frequently found in Louisiana and generally do not have a mayonnaise base.

·         Tartar sauce is mayonnaise spiced with pickled cucumbers and onion. Capers, olives, and crushed hardboiled eggs are sometimes included. A simpler recipe calls for only pickle relish to be added to the mayonnaise.

·         Thousand Island dressing is a salmon-pink dressing that combines tomato sauce and/or tomato ketchup or ketchup-based chili sauce, minced sweet pickles or sweet pickle relish, assorted herbs and spices (usually including mustard), and sometimes including chopped hard-boiled egg—all thoroughly blended into a mayonnaise base.

What is it about mustard that keeps a lemon/oil mixture emulsified?

 Mustard seeds contain roughly equal amounts of protein, carbohydrate, and oil. When ground, the protein and carbohydrates bond with oil – coat it actually – and keep it from repelling the water in lemon juice, mayonnaise, vinaigrettes, etc.

According to Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, the coating of the mustard seed also contains a fair bit of mucilage (a thick, sticky, gluey substance with an icky name), and this also helps to coat particles of oil, allowing them to coexist harmoniously with watery substances.

McGee says as much as 5% of the seed weight of the white mustard seed can be mucilage in the coat of the seed. White mustard is often used in sausage-making, he says, to help bind potentially repellent bits of meat.

Beurre Blanc

Emulsions

When making an emulsification, you’re basically cramming little droplets of oil in between water molecules, making it harder for the water molecules to move around. This creates a thick and creamy consistency, which is found in classical sauces such as hollandaise and mayonnaise.

In his book “On Food and Cooking,” Author Harold McGee refers to an emulsion as “Two Liquids: Continuous and Divided.”

 “The two liquids in an emulsion can be thought of as the container and the contained: one liquid is broken up into separate droplets, and these droplets are contained in and surrounded by the intact mass of the other liquid….The dispersed liquid takes the form of tiny droplets, between a ten-thousandth and a tenth of a millimeter across…The more droplets that are crowded into the continuous phase [read emulsion base], the more they get in the water’s…way, and the more viscous the emulsion is.”

To really make an emulsion work, you need shearing power. In culinary school, the first time we made mayonnaise in our basic skills course our instructor forced us to use a metal mixing bowl and a hand whisk. No doubt this masochistic approach was to teach us how easy us modern cooks have it. The problem with using a hand whisk to make an emulsion is that it has very little shearing power.

With modern day equipment on hand, it is much easier for us to make an emulsion just because we have more shearing power at our disposal. A KitchenAid with a whisk attachment, a food processor, and a good blender all have much more shearing power than a hand powered whisk. Why is this important?

Because the more shearing power you have, the smaller your emulsified “droplets” will be, and the less chance you will have of your emulsification separating (breaking). That’s why, when at all possible, I would recommend using a blender to make your emulsions, or at the very least a food processor. But pure shearing power isn’t enough; to really make a good, stable, emulsion, you need emulsifiers.

Emulsifiers are molecules that allow oil and water to play nicely together. These emulsifiers come in two forms. The first is a string type molecule that at one end likes to bond with fat and at the other end likes to bond with water. A typical example of this is lecithin which is found in soy beans and egg yolks.

The second are large protein molecules that will basically block the oil droplets from getting to one another (aka coalesce). Since they are not able to merge, the oil stays suspended in the water, keeping the emulsion from breaking. The protein molecules found in egg yolks and the casein molecules found in cream and milk are the best protein emulsifiers.

Emulsification also affects the way your palate perceives fatty things. Think of mayonnaise. If you tasted its component parts before they were blended together, you would be just pouring oil on your tongue, and you would wonder what you'd done to deserve this kind of punishment. But once emulsified ... incredibly delicious! The emulsification causes the oil to hit you much more softly, slowly revealing its round, rich flavor rather than drown you in grease.

Lecithin

Lecithin is ideal for making airs, foams, mousses and emulsions. Most commercial lecithin is extracted from soybeans making it both vegetarian and vegan friendly. Lecithin contains both hydrophobic (water-hating) and hydrophilic (water-loving) groups, so it can also be used in making emulsions. Under normal circumstances oil and water do not mix and separate out, creating two distinct layers, but an emulsifier such as lecithin helps to combine these two layers, creating a more stable preparation.

Lecithin is typically derived from soy bean as a by-product of creating soy based vegetable oil. Lecithin is extracted from hulled cooked soy beans by crushing the beans and then mechanically separating out (via extraction, filtration and washing) crude lecithin. The crude lecithin is then either enzymaticaly modified. Lecithin can also be derived from animal sources, such as eggs and animal proteins but animal derived lecithin is more expensive than plant derived lecithin so it’s less common and plant lecithin is more commonly used.

Beurre blanc

Literally translated from French as "white butter"— is a hot emulsified butter sauce made with a reduction of vinegar and/or white wine (traditionally Muscadet) and shallots into which cold, whole butter is blended off the heat to prevent separation. Each piece of butter carries all the ingredients necessary for a new portion of the sauce, so the cook can whisk in one piece of butter, or 100. The small amounts of lecithin and other emulsifiers naturally found in butter are used to form an oil-in-water emulsion. Although similar to hollandaise in concept, it is not considered either a classic leading or compound sauce. This sauce originates in Loire Valley cuisine.

Beurre blanc will begin to separate and leak butterfat if it’s temperature rises above approximately 135 degrees. Most damaging to the beurre blanc is letting it cool to below body temperature. The butterfat solidifies and forms crystals around 85 degrees, and the crystals poke through the membrane of emulsifiers and fuse with each other, forming a continuous network of fat that separates when the sauce is reheated. Ideally the sauce should be kept at 125 degrees.

Preparation

A good beurre blanc is rich and buttery, with a neutral flavor that responds well to other seasonings and flavorings, thereby lending itself to the addition of herbs and spices. It should be light and airy yet still liquid, while thick enough to cling to food. Beurre blanc is prepared by reducing wine, shallots, and herbs, if used, until it is nearly dry. Although not necessary, cream can be added at this point to act as a stabilizer to the sauce. Lemon juice is sometimes used in place of vinegar and stock can be added as well. Cold, one-inch cubes of butter are then gradually incorporated into the sauce as the butter melts and the mixture is whisked. The sauce can separate by either over heating or cooling. If it heats past 136°F, some of the emulsifying proteins will begin to break down and release the butterfat they hold in emulsion. If the sauce cools below 80°F, the butterfat will solidify.