For most Belgians chips and mayonnaise are a culinary marriage made in heaven. But why do we like eating our fries with a dollop of mayonnaise on top and have we always done so? These are questions that the VRT’s consumer team asked the Leuven University (KU Leuven) professor of food history Yves Segers.
Have we always eaten mayonnaise on our chips? “No, we haven’t. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that many people started eating mayonnaise on their fries”, Professor Segers said.
So what did people originally put on their chips? “There was no question of mayonnaise on chips in the mid-19th century. Then we ate two kinds of sauce on our fries. One was a sauce consisting of braised thin strands of onion, with boiled beans and vinegar, the other was a pickle sauce with mustard that they put on their chips.
The arrival of mayonnaise
It was the French master chef Marie-Antoine Carême that first experimented with mayonnaise. “He introduced the sauce to the world of haute cuisine. Moreover, it is his composition of egg yolk, oil and lemon juice that is now world-famous under the French name ‘mayonnaise’, Professor Segers told the VRT.
It wasn’t until 1861 that the recipe for mayonnaise first appeared in a Belgian cookery book. “It was the 19th-century Belgian chef Philippe-Edouard Cauderlier that wrote the first “Belgian” recipe for mayonnaise to be published in a cookery book. Back then mayonnaise was still a relatively unknown sauce that was used to, for example, flavour salads”, Professor Segers adds.
A luxury product
Due to the high cost of the ingredients required to make it, for a long time mayonnaise was a luxury product. “It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that a growing number of Belgians started putting mayonnaise onto their chips, as the important ingredients to make mayonnaise, vegetable oil and eggs, became cheaper”.
"Moreover, the food industry started selling ready-to-eat mayonnaise. The well-known brand Devos-Lemmens launched its mayonnaise in 1920. The growing popularity of mayonnaise and our preference for things that are sweeter, meant that it gradually replaced pickle saus”, Professor Segers told VRT News.
Why are chips and mayonnaise the ideal combination?
Chips and mayonnaise provide the perfect mix of flavours. “On the one hand you have the fat and salty element of the fries and on the other the sweet taste of the mayonnaise. This creates the flavour bomb that we Belgians love so much.”
It’s not only Belgians that like to put mayonnaise onto their chips. In neighbouring countries too, they love the combination of mayonnaise and fries. However, the mayonnaise sold abroad tastes different to that sold here. For example, in the Netherlands mayonnaise is sweeter than it is here, while in France the mayonnaise is more sour than it is here in Belgium as more mustard is added”, Professor Segers explains.