Mayonnaise

Mayo has a long, venerable tradition. From the Joy of Cooking (Rombaur and Rombaur Becker, 1972),

The making of a perfect mayonnaise is the Sunday job for Papa in France and rivalry for quality between households is intense. Mayonnaise or Mahonnaise–as it was first called, after a French victory over the British at Port Mahon on the Island of Minorca–is a great favorite, not only as a dressing but for combining with other foods. It has been made by hand for some 300 years.

Cuisinart's low-fat vs eHow's yogurt-based mayo recipes

I got several mayo recipes from the web (Google search "low-fat mayonnaise recipe"): A more traditional recipe from Jennie's Kitchen, a substitute using cottage cheese with corn starch as a thickening agent from eHow.com, and a yogurt-based substitute from the same place. I also found a mayonnaise recipe for my little Cuisinart Smart Stick. Of the four, I wasn't able to get Jennie's traditional or eHow's corn starch recipes to work. They didn't thicken or emulsify. The Cuisinart recipe worked fine. My particular recipe booklet didn't have sugar and had 1 cup of oil. I also used egg whites instead of whole egg product. It emulsified fine but I didn't like the taste. The oils I used may be to blame. Or maybe I'm just not use to eating saltless, greasy products. I plan to try fresher eggs and will get more flax seed and canola oil on Monday. The surprise was the yogurt-based substitute from eHow. I used 1/2 cup Greek Yogurt, 1 tbsp Almond oil, 1 tsp Dijon mustard. For a completely non-mayonnaise mayo substitute, this recipe seems to do the trick. I made up some Thousand Island dressing and it tasted just fine. I just have to get no-salt ketchup.