Good morning! It’s 7:00 a.m. on October 17th, 2025, and the Autumn sun is rising once again. It’s a bit chilly, and my dog is giving me that “I don’t know if I want to pee in the cold” look. But I digress (several times throughout this post LOL)! Anyway, on to the mayo!
Mayonnaise, in my family, is like the “crack cocaine of condiments” From growing up even to today.
Mayonnaise is a huge deal in my family. It was a staple in my family of origin, and it still is in my current family. It’s like this quintessential, extremely important item, right up there with peanut butter. I often think about my dad, who grew up during the Great Depression. Born in 1920, he would be 105 if he were still alive, but he lived to be 94. He grew up in Atlanta and Northeast Georgia until he joined the army in, I think, 1939.
Keeping me olde dad in mind…during the Great Depression, mayo was a staple. It was easy to get, affordable and, along with bread and peanut butter, it was used on everything—even stale bread! It just hit me today, while writing this, that my family still eats “depression foods” without even realizing it. So, back to dad (sorry)…every time I get to the bottom of a jar of mayonnaise, I think of my dad. Since he grew up poor, he would get every last bit of mayo out of the jar, usually with a wooden spoon. And to this day, I can’t throw away an empty jar without doing the same thing—he taught me that indirectly, I guess.
While I was growing up, there was simply no excuse for being out of mayonnaise. In the late 70s, my dad complained about the price of coffee and the price of mayo. Mayonnaise always had to be in the fridge. It was used on almost everything, but not absolutely everything, but a lot of things…and stuff.
Let’s rewind back to the Great Depression’s influence on my childhood via my parents. When I was a kid, my mom would make me sandwiches. There was this whole “tier” of sandwiches because my mom, like my dad, who was a child during the Depression and a teenager in the late 30s, did the same thing with her family. They were poor Southern families. So, there was this hierarchy of sandwiches, and you just didn’t eat one without mayonnaise. Even today, I rarely eat a sandwich without it.
The tiers went something like this, usually with mayo on white bread, sometimes wheat bread later on, or even toast so it wouldn’t fall apart:
- Mayonnaise sandwich: Just mayo on bread, often eaten with soup.
- Banana sandwich: My mom made these a lot.
- Canned pineapple sandwich: With a ring of pineapple.
- Tomato sandwich: Sliced tomato, pepper and salt.
- Potted Meat and Mayo sandwich: With Armour Potted Meat.
- Cheese sandwich: With American cheese.
- Egg salad sandwich: Usually after easter from all the boiled Easter eggs.
- Tunafish sandwich: Canned tuna and mayo. Fancy!
- Baloney sandwich: Getting fancier!
- Baloney sandwich with lettuce and tomato: Super fancy!
If the bologna sandwich was the “Mayo – Sandwich King,” then the queen would definitely be tuna salad. My family calls it “tunafish salad,” and in England, they call it “tuna mayonnaise.” My mom’s tuna salad was simple – one can of tuna, a tablespoon of mayonnaise, some oregano, black pepper, and a little salt. That’s it! Spread on white bread, no frills, no patty melts, no serving it on toast because it was too moist or anything like that. Just tuna, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and oregano on white bread.
Even today, mayo plays a huge role as a condiment and ingredient. I haven’t been to a family reunion in years (that’s another story), but at those reunions, you could see all the things made with mayonnaise:
- Potato salad (someone always brought a huge bowl!)
- Deviled eggs (like 17 different kinds on a long table, with someone fanning away flies.
- Coleslaw with mayonnaise
- Someone would even bring an extra jar of mayonnaise in case it was needed.
- Sometimes, a green bean casserole with mayonnaise in it.
All the sandwiches I make, no matter what they are, have mayonnaise on them. Plain and simple. I usually don’t put mustard on them. And I definitely don’t put mayo on my hamburgers. Believe it or not, my dad brought the Great Depression with him, and growing up, I rarely ate hamburgers. When I did eat them, they had mustard and ketchup, never mayo. You didn’t “waste” mayo on a hamburger.
So, even in this day and age, mayo is a big deal in my house. Things come to a screeching halt if we’re out! I also use mayo in egg salad and when I make pimento cheese (a top-secret recipe, everyone loves it!).
Oh, and one thing I completely left out! During the Great Depression, peanut butter was also readily available, and there was even a mayonnaise and peanut butter sandwich. Back then, the peanut butter was coarser ground, or something like that. Anyway, mayo played a role there too.
I almost forgot, and as a side note, I ran into a gentleman a few years back who actually said that sometimes mayonnaise was melted in a pan if there was no oil and used for frying. He liked using it to make grilled cheese sandwiches. He said it would have a tangy flavor though, and I thought, “I never thought about that! I wonder if my grandmother did that?” She used lard a lot, but yeah, that is so interesting. He says it’s a delicacy to him, but it’s very old school to use as oil for like making, I guess, eggs or something. Very cool! Anyway, I digress again, or did I?
And last but not least, especially for Southern folks who grew gardens (most did, most still do!), if you don’t have bread, a sliced fresh tomato off the vine with a dollop of mayonnaise is almost essential. Believe it or not, that was brought over from England! Fresh tomatoes are often part of a full English breakfast, which traditionally includes eggs, bacon, sometimes potatoes, and tomatoes. These were all part of farm breakfasts in England—preserved meat like bacon, ham, or sausage, fresh eggs from chickens, and tomatoes off the vine in summer and spring. That’s what a full breakfast was, though it usually wasn’t available in winter. But I digress again!
So, I leave you with this: are you running low on mayonnaise? If you think you are, go get some! This morning’s coffee time is a tribute to mayonnaise and all its many different uses and recipes. They say it was discovered in the Seven Years’ War, but that may be just a legend.
Okay, guys, be good to each other, love one another, and have a great Friday out there! This has been Coffee Time with Mark,
Love you guys, take care!