Mayonnaise
Etymology

The origin of the name mayonnaise is unclear, though some records indicate its introduction to the early 1800s, with numerous suggested, sometimes contradictory suggestions.

A common theory is that it is named for Port Mahon (Maó in Catalan), itself named after its founder Mago Barca, in Menorca, in honor of the 3rd Duke of Richelieu 's victory over the British in 1756, and in fact the name mahonnaise is used by some authors. But the name is only attested several decades after that event. One version of this theory says that it was originally known as salsa mahonesa in Spanish, but that spelling too is only attested later.

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière, a lawyer by qualification who acquired fame during the reign of Napoleon for his sensual and public gastronomic lifestyle, rejected the name mayonnaise because the word "is not French". He also rejected the name mahonnaise because Port Mahon "is not known for good food", and thus he preferred bayonnaise, after the city of Bayonne, which "has many innovative gourmands and... produces the best hams in Europe." Indeed, the city of Bayonne (sauce à la Bayonnaise) could also have given its name to this type of sauce, by spelling deformation. This form would seem to be confirmed by the fact that there is no written record of the sauce à la mayonnaise before the beginning of the 19th century, long after the capture of the city of Mahón.

Another hypothesis is based, according to Marie-Antoine Carême, a famous contemporary French chef, on a derivative of magnonaise (from the verb magner, or manier) or, according to Prosper Montagné, of moyeunaise (or moyennaise), based on moyeu(x) (or moyen) which means 'egg yolk', in Old French. It has also been suggested that the word be linked to the old verb mailler, meaning 'to beat'.

Joseph Favre, for his part, states in his memoirs that mayonnaise is an alteration of the word magnonnaise, derived from Magnon (Lot-et-Garonne), and that a cook from Magnon would have popularized it first in the South of France; he notes that this sauce has been variously named mahonnaise, bayonnaise and mayonnaise.

A more controversial hypothesis, put forward by the linguist and historian Nicolas Lepreux, suggests that mayonnaise originated in the Mayenne region, and that the "e" would have changed into an "o" over time: the apocryphal story tells that the Duke of Mayenne, on the day before the Battle of Arques, overindulged on chickens seasoned with a remarkable sauce, so that the next day he fell off his horse and lost the battle.
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