seebee wrote:all the MW lovers can enjoy their sugary space goo, but don't impose it on me with your trickery of calling it mayo. It is NOT mayo, never will be, never could be. I'll bet if you take a poll of people, some would say they don't like mayo because it is too sweet. Far too many liberties have been taken in this country with people being allowed to call white, viscous, sugary, chemical, glop "mayo."
It's sweet, but there's nothing spacey or chemical about Miracle Whip. It's legally not mayonnaise -- the oil content is too low -- but it's called "salad dressing" because it was meant to replace the homemade boiled dressing once commonly used for composed salads. I doubt you'd like that, either.
Here's a recipe from the 1872 "Mrs. Hill's Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book":
"One teaspoonful of mustard, one of salt, two of loaf sugar pulverized, a tablespoonful of olive oil, a teacup of vinegar; mix these together; put in a stew-pan until scalding hot. Beat two eggs well; pour to them the hot vinegar, stirring constantly until the danger of the eggs curdling is over. It must be entirely cold before being applied to the lettuce."
Many recipes call for cream or milk and butter in place of the oil and cornstarch is sometimes added as a thickener and stabilizer. Every recipe I've ever seen calls for sugar.
In those times, olive oil was all imported and very expensive, and cheaper vegetable oils were not available until Proctor & Gamble created cottonseed-based Crisco in 1911, so real mayonnaise was reserved for the tables of the well-to-do. I don't know why the common substitute was sweetened, but when Kraft
introduced Miracle Whip in 1933 at the Century of Progress, they were simply commercializing what was already a historic sauce.
So hate it if you will, but Miracle Whip really has quite a long heritage. The only innovation Kraft came up with was the machine they used to whip it up. Hence the name.
Last edited by
LAZ on July 27th, 2013, 11:20 am, edited 1 time in total.