Mayonnaise failings

I first attempted to make mayonnaise just six months ago.

I’d always been told just how impossibly difficult it was, but I had a recipe –a Nigel Slater recipe – my trusty balloon whisk, and rather too much confidence.

And it worked. Two egg yolks and a quantity of oil were transformed into a miraculous, wobbly, delicious substance. I added chopped capers and fresh herbs, and dolloped the results over poached chicken – warm that first day, and then delicious leftovers the following two days.

The next time I made it, it was in a holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere. Our next-door neighbour had given us two fresh lobsters he’d caught himself, in return for a lift into town to buy a packet of fags which looked remarkably like a quarter bottle of whisky.

We had the lobsters – which he’d cooked – cold, with potato wedges cooked in a hot oven with olive oil. But I decided we wanted sauce.

With the absolute confidence of the beginner, I once again separated eggs, whisking the yolks with olive oil slowly and carefully. This time, without a recipe or even a measuring jug, I produced a perfect wobbly substance that made our lobster and chips dinner absolutely the food of kings.

I’d begun to think I’d cracked mayonnaise, that, as with anything else in cooking, it just takes care and patience but isn’t particularly difficult.

But I’ve now entered a run of failures longer than my run of successes, and I’m losing hope.

Three times now, I’ve cracked egg yolks into a bowl and whisked them, either with a pinch of mustard powder or of salt, depending on whether I was relying on Delia or Nigel to show me the way.

Three times, it’s started well, but then turned into a curdled mess – a strange almost suspension of eggy blobs in oil. Nigel tells me this always happens at the beginning – well, it’s been happening to me at the end. Delia tells me it just won’t happen if I’m adding the oil slowly enough. Harrumph. I’m not sure I could go much slower.

I tried again last week, using the yolks from the meringues and my new hand mixer. I had great hope that the mixer would fix it and miraculously end my run of mayonnaise disasters.

It just went wrong quicker.

Now, both Nigel and Delia breezily assure you that, should your mayonnaise go wrong, it’s simply a question of getting another egg yolk and starting from scratch with that, mixing your failure in very slowly.

For my first two failures I didn’t have a spare egg yolk. But last week, I tried this. Twice. Which probably tells you just how well it worked.

I have some theories as to what I’m doing wrong. I think that I may be adding the oil too fast – not at the beginning, but in the middle, when I start to get cocky.

I think that my bowls might be the wrong size – using a big mixing bowl for two egg yolks means that at first the yolks are so spread up the sides of the bowl it’s impossible to mix things evenly. But I tried the only other size of bowl I have and that was disastrous – so small I had olive oil everywhere.

But I suspect the main problem is that (and this may also be an excuse) our kitchen is just very dark. More and more of our lights are going and I’ve been cooking from one overhead light and the light from the cooker hood. Being an internal kitchen, that’s not enough, and I’ve not quite been able to see what I’m doing. I think this has meant I’ve not been able to tell when my egg mixture is still a little bit greasy and could do with more whisking, and have been adding the oil in too quickly, causing it to curdle.

We have an electrician coming next week – not, I hasten to add, purely so I can make perfect mayonnaise, but as part of the kitchen revamp, and also because I suspect some of our failed lights are less than safe.*

When he’s been, and we’ve finished the revamp, I may try mayonnaise again – in a medium sized bowl, adding the oil slowly all the way through.

But first, a heartfelt plea – if you are a mayonnaise expert, or know a mayonnaise expert, please could you tell me your secret, or, if you don’t know what your secret is, just how you go about doing it? I want to know what I’m going wrong! There’s something infinitely frustrating about having made perfect mayonnaise exactly twice.

*My husband tells me the electrician looks like Puck from Glee. Unfortunately, with the Husband unemployed, I can’t get away with claiming it’s my turn to stay home. Which is almost as much of a waste as the amount of failed mayo I’ve been chucking in the bin.