The easiest way to make your own mayonnaise

The real thing, in moments

When I was small, my parents would receive - by train, believe it or not - a fine salmon from the River Moy in County Mayo every Summer. It would be put on the train by a family friend who took a fishing holiday there every year, and it would then be delivered to our door. As this was before my somewhat luddite mother and father acquired a freezer, the fish needed to be cooked and eaten in pretty short order.

My main memory of this is of my mother slaving away with a hand whisk and a jug of oil in order to make mayonnaise. In those days - we’re talking the 1960s and early 1970s - there was no Hellmans. The best you could hope for was salad cream which was, frankly, not at all the same thing (although Constance Spry’s version is not a bad sauce). Those were the days before olive oil really arrived in Ireland, apart from the sort you could get in the chemist’s for treating ear ache.

By the 1970s, my mother was able to buy small bottles -about the size of a Baby Power’s - of a rather rank olive oil from Goodall’s but she used corn oil or sunflower oil for mayonnaise. A bit of mustard would go into the egg yolk and then a thin stream of oil would be gradually whisked in, the acidity and seasoning being added at the end. It was quite a faff, and I used to carry on the family tradition, albeit with better oil, until a few years ago when I discovered a much quicker way.

The trick is to use a whole egg and plenty of mustard. In the video, I used lemon juice for the acidity, but I generally use organic cider vinegar these days.

I use a basic olive oil as I prefer to avoid seed oils; if it’s lightly flavoured, it works well; pungent ones are just too much. Of course, you can use any neutral oil you like but I enjoy the bit of flavour that my olive oil imparts to the mayonnaise. By the way, your egg should be fresh and both it your oil should be at room temperature.

Cool apron, I know! By the way, I had been planting out beetroot earlier but these hands had had a good scrub before I tackled the mayonnaise.