The best and worst supermarket mayonnaise (and Aldi is the winner)
The mayo manufacturers seem to have missed the memo. Ask any chef: mayonnaise should be nothing more than oil and egg yolks, seasoned lightly with vinegar, salt and perhaps mustard. A splash of water might be necessary to loosen it a little, but nothing more, and the flavouring needs to be gentle. Mayonnaise is an emollient, not a stiffer version of sour-sweet salad cream.
Properly packed and sealed, a simple jar of mayonnaise can be stored at room temperature for weeks until it is opened so there’s no excuse for adding the likes of preservatives and stabilisers. A few of the 25 I tried showed this was possible without resorting to the kind of weird ingredients that mark products out as ultra processed: Daylesford, Jean Baton, Delouis, Dr Wills, Duchy Organic, take a bow. Sadly the rest were bothered with everything from calcium disodium EDTA (an antioxidant) to modified maize starch, which thickens more cheaply than oil, and colouring.
On the up side, almost all of the jars on test use free-range egg, even the budget ones. The exceptions are the Polish brand Winiary, Japanese Kewpie, and Tesco. Tesco’s website says it has “made a […] commitment to move to 100% cage free for products containing ingredient eggs” although it’s not clear by when.
The budget options are much higher in water, with only around a third of the oil of the standard mayonnaises. This makes them much lower in fat, and the ingredients lists are sometimes spookily similar to the supermarket low-fat mayos, both of which are higher in ultra-processed food (UPF) markers.
Savvy shoppers will notice that the budget versions are not even a bargain. The Sainsbury’s Stamford Street Co mayo is exactly the same price as the standard Sainsbury’s one, with Asda and Tesco’s economy mayo coming in only 4p and 1p less respectively.
Having ranted about UPF ingredients, you’ll see that the winning mayonnaise did in fact include three. The Aldi mayo is the most versatile and, incidentally, great value, and it’s much lower in nasties than the worst offender, which scored seven. I’ve listed the number of UPF ingredients for each brand, to help you choose. You have the memo.
How we tested
Each mayonnaise was spooned into a bowl and assigned a letter to anonymise the samples. I tasted them blind before assessing the ingredients.
