On Food and Cooking

water-soluble head, just like lecithin (p.
802). They are concentrated in the oil, and
when the cook breaks the oil into droplets,
they move to the droplet surface, where
they end up pushing the bulkier, more
effective egg emulsifiers off the droplet
surfaces. Because the droplets are crowded
tightly together, this causes the droplets to
coalesce and form puddles of oil.
This delayed disintegration of olive-oil
mayonnaise is well known in Italy, where
the sauce is said to “go crazy” (impazzire).
Old and improperly stored oils are most
likely to have suffered damage to their oil
molecules and therefore to cause problems
in mayonnaise. Two ways to avoid crazy
mayonnaise are to use refined olive oil,
and to use extra-virgin oil as a flavoring,
with the bulk of the oil being any
flavorless refined oil.
Making Hollandaise and Béarnaise There
are at least five different ways of making