Was Mrs. Schlorer’s the First Commercial Mayonnaise Brand?

Long before mayonnaise became a ubiquitous sandwich spread, it was revered as an elite cold sauce in classic French cuisine, traditionally traced back to 1756 during the Duc de Richelieu’s capture of Port Mahon. For more than a century, it remained an ephemeral kitchen preparation made fresh in restaurants or home pantries. That changed in 1907 when Amelia Schlorer began jarring her homemade recipe in the back of her husband’s Philadelphia delicatessen. By 1911, the family officially trademarked Mrs. Schlorer’s, establishing the first commercially prepared and distributed mayonnaise brand in the United States, beating out New York’s Hellmann’s by just a single year. What made commercialization possible was not an industrial chemical secret, but the basic physics of the emulsion itself. Unlike delicate warm sauces like hollandaise or temporary vinaigrettes that quickly separate, a true mayonnaise packs microscopic oil droplets so densely within an egg-and-acid matrix that it forms a permanent emulsion. With the right balance of acidity and clean handling, it possessed a natural stability that allowed it to sit in glass jars on grocery shelves without breaking down, transforming an aristocratic French sauce into an everyday American staple.

Although we now think of it mostly as a sandwich spread, mayonnaise, during the 1800’s was more often used as a sauce or a salad dressing. It is, after all, one of the French Mother sauces. Mayonnaise recipes appearing in early cookbooks were of many varieties and flavors, and were usually intended specifically for use on salads or other food items, including meat, poultry, fish, or vegetables.

The first commercial mayonnaise, which offered a readily available sauce that would not spoil quickly or easily separate, helped to change this. These widely available jarred mayonnaise brands caused mayonnaise to become more of a generic and uniform food in the US, to be used more often, including on sandwiches and burgers.

The Science of Jarred Mayonnaise

All emulsions are not created equal. Mayonnaise, in comparison to most others, is a super-emulsion!

The Temporary (Vinaigrette): You whisk oil and vinegar vigorously, it stays together for the duration of a salad toss, then retreats back into two layers. This is a purely temporary emulsion. It is meant to facilitate getting the “dressing” on the salad without the water and oil being completely separate from on another.
The Barely Semi-Permanent Vinaigrette: If you add an emulsifier to a vinaigrette, typically mustard, you have added an emulsfier, but a fairly weak one! This is a semi-permanent emulsion and it will separate fairly quickly.
The Stronger Semi-Permanent Hollandaise: Since there is little oil and more liquid in a hollandaise sauce, this emulsion lasts longer than a simple oil and water, but they can break very easily if not handled correctly, and they will, after time, separate naturally.
The Permanent (Mayonnaise): Mayonnaise is different than most kitchen emulsions in that it contains much more oil than water. With eggs and mustard acting as emulsifiers and mixed vigorously (as in a blender), the oil forms into very tiny droplets and these droplets are surrounded by a molecular “shield” formed by the emulsifiers.
The Molecular Shield: This film or “shield” that surrounds each tiny water droplet has molecules with a helpful Jeckyl-and-Hide nature: they are amphiphilic. One side likes water and the other side likes oil! The oil-loving side clings to the oil droplet and the water-loving side keeps the water surrounding the droplets of oil tightly in a continuous matrix of oil-droplets with a very thin film of water all around them. The water cannot get to the oil droplets because of the shield and the same shield keeps the whole thing together as one stable mixture. This results in a very thick and firm emulsion that does not break.

So, unlike any other French sauce or common kitchen emulsion, mayonnaise lent itself from being jarred and sold commercially. While jarred mayonnaise contains preservatives and perhaps some unnecessary ingredients, like corn syrup, it is the basic science of the emulsion that makes it remain stable for so long while sitting in your refrigerator.

From Elite French Sauce to Everyday Sandwich Spread

Today, mayonnaise is treated as an automatic reflex for sandwiches of all types. Yet nothing about its early commercial history was aimed at sandwiches. For more than a century after its French creation, mayonnaise was strictly a cold dressing for composed dishes, lobster, cold poached salmon, asparagus, and early potato salads. Making it from scratch was notoriously fussy. Home cooks had to slowly trickle oil into raw egg yolks by hand, risking a broken mess if the kitchen was too warm or the whisking too slow.

When commercial jars like Mrs. Schlorer’s and Hellmann’s hit grocery shelves in the 1910s, they were not yet being marketed for bread. They were instead advertised as an instant shortcut for the American salad craze. Promotional cookbooklets printed by early manufacturers in the 1920s were filled almost exclusively with recipes for chicken salads, shredded cabbage slaws, and fruit platters. The commercial jar simply eliminated the tedious labor of whisking an emulsion by hand. The pivot to sandwiches was driven by industrial convenience in the late 1920s and 1930s.

The introduction of commercial pre-sliced bread in 1928 created the modern packed lunchbox. Millions of industrial workers and school children needed sandwiches assembled for their daily lunch. Up until this time, butter had historically been the standard sandwich barrier, but during the Great Depression and wartime rationing, commercial mayonnaise offered an affordable, easy-to-spread alternative.

Mayonnaise also solved a practical problem for sandwiches meant to be eaten later. Because it’s roughly 80 percent oil, spreading a thin layer directly across sliced bread created a waterproof barrier that prevented wet ingredients, like sliced tomatoes or pickles, from turning the bread into mush.

By the time canned tuna, mass-market deli meats, and diner club sandwiches exploded in the post-WWII era, mayonnaise was no longer viewed as a delicate sauce. It had become a standard kitchen staple, providing the necessary fat, acidity, and moisture barrier that made dry, mass-produced bread and lean meats palatable.

Mrs. Schlorer’s: The First Commercial Mayonnaise Brand.

Perhaps sometime in 1910, a Philadelphia delicatessen owner named Schlorer took his wife’s mayonnaise recipe, added preservatives, and made up large batches in the back room of his store, for sale to the public. He called it Mrs. Schlorer’s, trademarking the name in 1911. Schlorer’s was not only the first commercially prepared and sold mayonnaise, but also the first to be packed into glass jars.

Mrs. Schlorer’s Mayonnaise was so successful that Schlorer began producing other products, such a Olive-Naise and salad dressings. Schlorer also made a relish spread. Since the company made its own pickles for its relish spread, they fell into the pickle business as well. The Schlorer Delicatessen Company was created to produce and market the various products. In the 1920’s, the company also produced cookbooklets with recipes using mayonnaise, as a means of advertising. Today, Mrs. Schorer’s brand is owned by Good Foods, Inc.

Mrs. Schlorer wasn’t the only one who saw the potential in bringing “restaurant” flavors into the home pantry. Decades later, another entrepreneur would do for Chinese food what the Schlorers did for mayonnaise. Learn how Chun King became an empire by putting Chow Mein in a can and convincing America it was “authentic.”

The Rise of the “Blue Ribbon”: Hellmann’s and Best Foods

A very close second was a familiar brand that many readers will probably have on hand, Hellmann’s, which also came from a delicatessen, this one in New York City. Richard Hellman missed marketing the first commercial mayonnaise by a very close margin. He opened his delicatessen there in 1905, and in 1912 he began making mayonnaise, also claimed to be based on his wife’s recipe, to sell commercially. Before this, he had served his mayo on salads to his customers.

At first, Hellman’s Mayonnaise was packaged in wooden boxes or “boats,” but later Hellmann’s switched to glass jars. There were two versions, and Hellmann placed a blue ribbon around one to differentiate it from the other. Soon, Hellmann designed a special Blue Ribbon label, which, according to the company, was trademarked in 1913. Hellmann’s is now the best selling mayonnaise in the United States.

At around the same time that Hellmann’s and Schlorer’s were beginning to thrive, in 1912, a company called Gold Medal Mayonnaise Company started making mayonnaise in California. This company merged with another company to form Best Foods, which sold Best Foods Mayonnaise. In 1932, Best Foods merged with Hellmann’s. Best Foods Mayo was sold east of the Rockies while Hellmann’s was sold in the east. Today, they are both owned by Unilever.