Some people just love that mayonnaise. You are one of them, right? We would like to introduce you to why Japanese mayonnaise is so special.
Mayonnaise as we know it
The ingredients are simple and yet lead to an intense taste experience when you add mayonnaise to salads, sandwiches or fried dishes. The basis of the thick sauce is made up of oil, vinegar and egg yolk. By the way, mayonnaise is made cold and now it is often also available as a vegan version without an egg.
How mayonnaise came to Japan
About a hundred years ago the Japanese Toichiro Nakashima was traveling in the USA. There he discovered the mayonnaise that he wanted to bring home with him to enrich vegetable dishes in a nutritious way. The vinegar mixture and a few other ingredients were adapted and the mayonnaise produced by the Kewpie company found its way into Japanese households. It contains a little less acid than other types of mayo. Fried dishes such as okonomiyaki or karaage chicken are indispensable nowadays without spicy, mild and creamy mayonnaise. Japanese love their kewpie mayonnaise.
The Kewpie logo
Kewpie mayonnaise comes in a soft plastic bottle that is easy to squeeze. This means that no content is wasted and the rest of the bottle can also be used in good doses for cooking or garnishing. The logo on the bottle is special because it shows an old drawing by the caricaturist Rosie O'Neill. A baby can be seen in red simple lines. Actually, it is now a drawing of a naked doll. The 1909 cartoon drawings by O'Neill, in which Cupid baby characters appeared, were so popular that dolls were developed and made from them. The first dolls were made in Germany in the decade of the last century. After the Second World War, the dolls became popular especially in Japan.
MYCONBINI tip: If you are also a Kewpie-lover, we have both an egg version and a vegan egg-free version for you in our shop.