Blender Mayonnaise (Page 887)

• Date: Saturday, May 10, 2008 -- 7pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: Matty's Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Dining Companions: Matt, Mike, Ana, Craig, Grace, Alex, Gunther, Angelica, Jenny, Ricky, Vero, and Pam
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

OK, back to the mayonnaises. This was mayo number 6 (out of 9) that we made for the mayonnaise tasting on Saturday. No one was particularly excited about this one, but I actually liked it. Matty complained that it was too thick, but it was much more like the consistency of mayonnaise that you would buy than any of the other recipes. This mayo would certainly be spreadable (e.g. on a sandwich) whereas some of the other mayonnaise recipes we made would be too runny. I thought the flavor of this mayonnaise was also good. It tasted like mayonnaise -- pure, simple mayonnaise, without any distractions. Whereas the non-blender plain mayonnaise recipe tasted overpoweringly of mustard, this one did not. The ratio of ingredients was different in this recipe, as well as the emulsification method. It came together quickly in the blender, eliminating the need for constant whisking and drop-by-drop oil adding. Overall, I was pretty happy with this mayo, although, as I noted, no one was too head-over-heals about it and several people strongly disliked it.

This recipe isn't online.

Someone asked me recently if I have any idea how much this project is going to cost all together. Now there's a scary question if I have ever heard one! The answer: a lot! Ok, let's try to do a slightly more specific computation than that. So far, I maintain that a reasonable upper bound on the average amount of money spent per recipe would be $20. Some of them are certainly more expensive than that (e.g. the wedding cake), but some of them are also much less expensive than that (e.g. mayonnaise). So let's say that this first half of the project has been about $20 per recipe. The second half of the project I anticipate being more expensive. I have already made most of the recipes with only a few ingredients, and most of the recipes with ingredients that are unusually cheap (i.e. all the recipes for rice, or beans). The sections that I am doing the worst on are those with fish, shellfish, beef, veal, pork, and lamb. None of those things are cheap. So let's set an upper bound of $30 per recipe for the second half of the project. In other words, let's make our upper bound on average cost per recipe $25 for the whole project. So what do we get? Well, 1293 recipes at $25 a piece... Wow. that's a scary number. Keep in mind this is an upper bound. The project will cost at most: $32,325. Good thing I am raking in the big bucks in math academia. Hahaha...

I will rationalize it a little bit by noting that money spent on book food is the vast majority of the total money I spend on food for myself (and my special gentleman). So over four years, that isn't so bad. In addition to paying for most of my food, that $32,325 has also paid for a lot of meals that I have enjoyed sharing with people that I love! I think it is more than worth it!