Mayodendum

The previous mayonnaise post generated comments that cannot be ignored.

It’s true. Jews have a hate-hate relationship with mayo.
JAF

And to reiterate – with good reason (see below):
I’m pro mayo all the way, baby. It makes the tomato sandwich what it is (open face slice of white bread, mayo, slice of tomato large enough to cover the bread, salt & pepper). Maybe it’s the hint of sweetness it adds, or maybe it’s simply because mayo is such a guilty pleasure–nothing good can come of it health-wise, I’m quite sure. It’s also THE single most important sandwich lubricant. You can’t have a ham sandwich on dry bread, and to me, mustard without mayo is too sharp (again that sweetness). So I like them together.

The only exception to the mustard-mayo combo is Durkee’s, a spread that kind of takes the place of both. But it’s hard to find outside the South.
Linda Kulman

After reading the Mayo? Yay-oh or Nay-oh Linda adds:
And…I’m Jewish!

An important point that was neglected:
I like a bit (of mayo) in certain situations. Wouldn’t want a sandwich to fall apart, now would I?
K Groom

And from the nayo camp Cynthia Olson has a tale:
Too much mayonnaise is a terrible thing. Once, when I had a bit of a hangover, I was at a restaurant eating a hamburger. The bun was kind of dry so I asked for a “little bit” of mayonnaise. The waitress brought out a SOUP BOWL full of mayo. I had to put a napkin over it so that I didn’t have to look at it because just the sight was enough to make me hurl. What was she thinking?!!! My friends laugh about “the mayonnaise incident” to this day.

As for me…
Growing up my mother always spread both pieces of bread with some butter – granted, my dad owned a dairy – to keep the bread from getting soggy. The butter also sticks the sandwich together and provides lubrication. Butter tastes good with basically anything. I don’t remember eating much mayonnaise as a child, except IN things such as tuna salad and potato salad. We were a mustard family, perhaps because my father is Jewish and my mother’s father was German. I remember Sunday night sandwiches – thin slices of ham on nice sturdy white bread from my dad’s bakery, butter on the bread, brown mustard too, and crunchy lettuce. It was iceberg, which I still love on a sandwich. It is crunchy and wet. Dill pickles on the side. Also crunchy and wet. Salty too. Always want to snap off a bite of pickle with every bite of sandwich. So, no mayonnaise that I recall.

Later on I learned to make mayonnaise and that is when the lightbulb went off. Homemade mayonnaise is another animal altogether and a feat of culinary prestidigitation.

If you live 7 miles off the paved road you would want lunch to be like Miriam Rubin’s, at least once in a while.
Today we have guests from Chicago. For lunch, outside on the big table under the black walnut tree, we had locally raised and cured thick-sliced bacon, the first fat slabs of my incomparable Brandywine tomatoes, soft, locally grown lettuce, huge slices of toasted firm seeded bread, a chiffonade of basil (from the garden), this year’s Grandma Rubin’s Kosher Dills, last years crisp sweet and spicy pickle slices, kosher salt, grainy mustard, and mayo.

What a lunch that was.

I betcha she made that mayo herself, too.