It seems like it’d be useful to have a jar of béarnaise or hollandaise, but I have to make those. Can’t buy good béarnaise or hollandaise. Good mayo is easy to get tho. WTF?

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    22 days ago

    This isn’t a simple thing tbh.

    It’s partially the difficulty in keeping hollandaise and bearnaise shelf stable and unbroken without sacrificing flavor.

    It’s partially cultural, in that mayo is what got popular at the right time for an effort to make it shelf stable and maintain flavor.

    And there’s the versatility, though that’s largely a matter of perception. Since mayo is a thicker sauce in the form that gained popularity, you can do a lot more with it than a proper sauce that’s going to be more runny.

    I mean, if you’re asking this, you’ve made hollandaise at least, and probably bearnaise. So you how that it can difficult to keep together in the fridge. It tends to break in a way that home made mayo just doesn’t.

    If you add enough extra emulsifiers to keep it together through shipping and storage, then you mute the taste. It’s like you said, you can’t buy good hollandaise. It’s the buying part that interferes in making it a sauce/condiment for the people at large.

    Since getting either one to a store that’s tasty isn’t currently realistic, it’ll never get enough demand for it to improve. Anyone tasting the store bought stuff that’s out there already isn’t going to be a fan. If they’ve ever had it in a restaurant, the packaged stuff is unpleasant in comparison (if only bland and uninteresting on its own merits). And, if they can make their own, they probably aren’t interested in buying it because it isn’t exactly hard to pull off at home. My teenager can do a passable hollandaise, and they don’t even care about cooking.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      22 days ago

      You can’t even buy good mayo.

      The difference between the best jar of mayo (pasteurized) and what you can make at home is shocking.

      Like the best mayo out of a jar is flat and dull in comparison.

      Op’s clearly never made mayo.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        22 days ago

        Depends on what good means for the application. But store bought is almost always bland as hell compared to homemade, that’s for Dang sure

    • prole
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      21 days ago

      I was just thinking… Since we call mayonnaise, “mayo,” does that mean in an alternate timeline where hollandaise or bearnaise got popular instead, would they call them, “Holland” and “bear”?

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        21 days ago

        It would have been awesome :)

        Hey, baby, when you’re at the store, pick up some more bear.

        Or, Dammit, we’re out of Holland, and we’ve got guests coming!