The Lost Mayonnaise Generation

The Lost Mayonnaise Generation David Rosengarten

Rosengarten Classic. Originally Published: Dean and Deluca Blog, August 2010.

jules mayonnaiseI confess. When I have been in the dining company of vital, health-conscious young women who are fat-phobic (a rather high percentage of this demo), I have been able to make them see that butter is a beautiful thing. I have been able to make them see that olive oil is a beautiful thing.

But when I try to make them see that mayonnaise is a beautiful thing, they bolt.

“Why would I ever put mayonnaise in my mouth?” one of them once earnestly asked. “It’s disgusting.”

This, my friends, is The Lost Mayonnaise Generation. Sneakers to work and all.

And I guess I understand how years and years of putting a dry slice of turkey breast on a piece of bread, diligently avoiding the relief of fat, creating all the mental and emotional structures to make that choice automatic—could ultimately mold one’s reactions so that mayonnaise instinctively seems like a white form of the devil.

In my experience, however, when you carefully and artificially hone those synapse-jumping instant reactions, you may be depriving your synapses—and all the rest of you, like your mouth!—of a great experience.

Mayonnaise—and I’m talking here about the commercial stuff, like Hellman’s—is wonderful sandwich-making magic. Foodie Americans are sometimes ashamed of the fact that Hellman’s is always in their refrigerators—but I know one very famous French chef who, because he cannot get Hellman’s in Paris—travels the world with an empty suitcase when he thinks he’s passing through a country where Hellman’s might be available at the supermarket. When I asked him why he prefers Hellman’s to his own, handmade mayo, he said—and I kid you not—”Because it is bett-air! It is mush bett-air!”

Shocking? Well, to me, homemade and Hellman’s are simply two different things that share a name. So you don’t have to go around feeling Hellman’s is “worse.”

And then you should imagine a Frenchman coming to the US, and being presented with a towering sandwich. It is made from good white bread, toasted gold on the outside. Inside await gorgeous, ripe red tomatoes, refreshing lettuce, a few rashers of crispy bacon, and the magic white stuff. Imagine his surprise on that first bite—the way the mayo plays like jazz off the tomatoes, then off the bacon, in two different ways, wrapping its crazy-rich eggy garment first around acid, then around salt, drawing all the elements into one helluva gullet-glow consummation.

You bet they’re lost, that generation! Come on people…live a little! Mangez les bons produits Americains!

photos: m kasaharajules/Flickr Creative Commons

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