mayonnaise

18 September 2026

Mayonnaise is a creamy sauce made from oil, egg yolks, and vinegar, lemon juice, or other acid. It is commonly used on sandwiches and hamburgers, in salads, and on French fries. It also forms the base for other sauces like tartar sauce, ranch dressing, and some versions of aioli. The name mayonnaise first appears in French in 1804.

While many sources give a definite origin story for mayonnaise, the etymology is uncertain. It is commonly said to be named after the city of Port Mahón on the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean. French forces, under the command of Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, seized the island from the British in 1756 during the Seven Year’s War. Allegedly, the duke’s chef devised the sauce in celebration of the victory. Early spelling of the word is often rendered as mahonnaise. But there are chronological problems with this explanation. The word doesn’t appear in French until almost fifty years after the duke’s victory, and the original spelling is mayonnaise.

Another possibility is that mayonnaise is an alteration of bayonnaise, named for the city of Bayonne. This name appears in French in 1806. In his 1808 Manuel des Amphitryons Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de La Reynière wrote:

Les puristes, en cuisine, ne sont pas d’accord sur la dénomination de ces sortes de ragoûts; les uns disent mayonnaise, d’autres mahonnaise, et d’autres bayonnaise. Le premier de ces mots n’est pas français; et le second indique une ville où rien n’est renommé pour la bonne chère; c’est ce qui fait que nous nous sommes décidés pour bayonnaise, dont l’étymologie est dans le nom d’une ville qui renferme beaucoup de Gourmands inventeurs, et qui, de plus, donne naissance chaque année aux meilleurs jambons de l’Europe.

(Culinary purists disagree on the name for these types of ragouts: some call them mayonnaise, others mahonnaise, and still others bayonnaise. The first of these terms is not French, and the second refers to a city not renowned for fine dining; that is why we have opted for bayonnaise, a name derived from a city that is home to many inventive gourmets and that, moreover, produces the finest hams in Europe.)

Yet another explanation that appears in the early years of the word’s use in French is that it was originally magnonnaise, after the French verb manier, meaning to handle, a reference to the preparation of the sauce.

English language use of mayonnaise dates to 1813 when it appears in Louis Ude’s The French Cook; or The Art of Cookery:

No. 58.—Mayonnaise

Take three spoonfuls of Allemande, six ditto of aspic, and two of oil. Add a little tarragon vinegar, that has not boiled, some pepper and salt, and minced ravigotte, or merely some parsley. Then put in the members of fowl, or fillets of soles, &c. Your mayonnaise must be put to ice; neither are you to put the members into your sauce till it begins to freeze. Next dish your  meat or fish, mask with the sauce before it be quite frozen, and garnish your dish with whatever you think proper, as beet root, jelly, nasturtiums, &c.

Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. mayonnaise, n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, March 2001, s.v. mayonnaise, n.

Ude, Louis Eustache. The French Cook; or The Art of Cookery. London: Cox and Baylis, 1813, 34. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Dave Wilton, 2026. Licensable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.