Hi Everyone,
I have a friend visiting who is watching her cholesterol intake and so each morning, I make her scrambled egg whites. What this means is that each morning I am left with a couple of egg yolks. The first week I was throwing them away but then I began to feel as if I was wasting the eggs so I decided to turn the yolks into Aïoli/mayonnaise. Crèmes, custards and ice creams were options too but I like the magic of making mayonnaise.
Egg yolks work excellently as emulsifiers. An emulsifier is a substance of some kind that coats the oil droplets in a sauce and prevents them from combining with each other. Mayonnaise is an emulsified sauce. Renowned food scientist, Harold McGee describes mayonnaise as “…an emulsion of oil droplets suspended in a base composed of egg yolk, lemon juice or vinegar, water and often mustard…” I know it doesn’t sound tasty, but he’s a scientist, what did you expect? (Smile).
Aïoli versus Mayonnaise
I’m sure that you have seen the word Aïoli on menus and wondered (like me) how different it is from Mayonnaise. Aïoli is a kind of mayonnaise, there are differences in the makeup of these two egg sauces (condiments, dressing) but they are essentially the same thing. Different flavouring ingredients and how they are used is what prompts most people to make a
