Actually, if you make this in the usual way, slowly drizzling oil into a running blender or hand mixer, you can make it as stiff as commercial mayonnaise. I like my method, though. There's nothing at all to clean up, and when you're done — hey, presto! — the mayo is packaged and ready to pop in the fridge.

Also, it's a terrific arm workout.

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An emulsion is when tiny, discrete droplets of one liquid are suspended in another liquid without dissolving. Mayonnaise is an emulsion. Mayonnaise and milk are emulsions of oil in water, margarine and butter are emulsions of water in oil. In fact, churning cream into butter (the exact nature of which science still knows bugger-all) is a process of converting an oil-in-water emulsion to a water-in-oil emulsion.

A third ingredient is usually present in a stable emulsion, as well: a surfactant. A surfactant (think: surface-active) alters the surface tension of a liquid. All liquids have a sort of "skin" of tension on the outside, and a surfactant alters the toughness of the skin of one or both elements.

All of this scientific blah-blah-blah is important because a) it is grievously cool and b) if mayonnaise goes wrong, it's because it didn't properly emulsify.

Egg yolk is an emulsion to begin with, which is a good start. It also helps other materials emulsify.

The acid ingredients — vinegar and/or lemon — are important to flavor of mayonnaise, but can interfere with the texture. Too much of these ingredients, and the result is a thin, drizzly mayo. Too little, and it tastes unpleasantly oily. Most recipes I've seen call for more acid ingredients than I could ever get a mayo to support.

The salt, sugar and paprika (or cayenne) are for seasoning only, but the mustard flour is also a surfactant. And a preservative. You go, mustard!

But if the purpose is to make a mayonnaise that tastes as much as possible like commercial mayonnaise (and it is), why not just buy the stuff?

Because the British version doesn't taste right, that's why. It tastes all thin and sour and Miracle Whippish. They sell Hellman's goddamned mayonnaise over there — same company, same label, same ingredients — and it's just wrong.

I finally thought to bring a jar over with me (that's what I need on my record — nabbed at the border for mayonnaise smuggling). The jars look identical, but the ingredients are in a different order. The British version has more vinegar and less egg. Which is exactly the way it tastes.

Reminds me of brown sauce, a squeeze bottle of which stands on every cafe table in England. It's brown, about the consistency of ketchup, and it tastes...brown. Faintly vinegary and...brown. It's as though condiment ingredients have been miraculously balanced such that every flavor cancels out every other flavor, and the result tastes of nothing in particular.

Incidentally, one in 20,000 raw eggs is contaminated with salmonella. If you follow my mayonnaise recipe and you get sick and die, don't come crying to me.