Mayonnaise

a thick, creamy sauce or dressing made of oil, egg yolks and lemon juice or vinegar. The story of the origin of mayonnaise is one of the most disputed in French culinary history. The most commonly circulated story involves Vigneron du Plessis, Duke de Richelieu (the great-great-nephew of the famed Bishop Louis-François Armand), born in Paris in 1696. He became Maréchal de France after the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Eleven years later, he was party to the siege of Fort-Mahon, Minorca Island's capital and an English possession. After seizing Fort St-Philippe at Mahon, there was no butter or cream available, so his chef had to make a dressing from eggs and oil. When they returned to the mainland, the concoction became known as sauce mahonnaise. Besides enjoying status as a skillful military leader, the duke was also generally known as a bon vivant with the odd habit of inviting his guests to dine in the nude. Others believe that the sauce was known as Bayonnaise, from the French town of Bayonne, later changed to "mayonnaise." The legendary French chef Antonin Carême claimed that the word came from the French verb manier, meaning "to stir", and referred to the sauce as magnonnaise or magnionnaise in his writings. Prosper Montagne, the French chef and author who spent his life writing about food, suggested that the word was "a popular corruption of moyeunaise, derived from the Old French moyeu, meaning 'egg yolk,' which is, with oil, the base of mayonnaise."

---