Welcome Friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to Sunday morning
and the old cookbook show today is uh
chocolate mayonnaise cake part duh uh
last week well in fact only moments ago
but last week on the show and only
moments ago in my timeline I made this
uh this mayonnaise cake from 1927.
um
told the whole story about you know how
it shows up the newspaper blah blah blah
that that cake exists from 1927 into the
1950s
but the cake we're going to do today
its first appearance in a newspaper or
in publication or you know published
essentially is 1945.
and that's kind of significant because
1937 is the year that's often bandied
about by a lot of people saying that
um in 1937 this recipe appears on the
label of a Hellman's mayonnaise jar
and I haven't been able to find that
anywhere I have I have contacted
Hellman's and spoken to people there
trying to get a picture or a PDF or some
confirmation that this indeed did show
up on a Hellman's mayonnaise jar in 1937
and nobody seems to have it but they all
sort of toe the line oh yeah I don't
know we had it in 1937 but they can't
actually prove it
which is really strange to me
um because realistically this cake that
we're going to make today does not show
up in any of the cookbooks that I own
doesn't show up in any of the church
cookbooks Community cookbooks any of the
the properly published or or curated
cookbooks
doesn't show up in newspapers it doesn't
show up anywhere until 1945 and that is
in a newspaper in Louisville Kentucky
and that article in the newspaper in
Louisville Kentucky is also very
interesting because it is the sort of
the Genesis the starting point the
kernel of another piece of Mythology
that surrounds this cake
so let's get started
um
the recipe as it's as it's related in
this article the the recipe writer says
that you know one of her male colleagues
at the newspaper sent her this recipe
and she sort of she reacts to it kind of
dismissively
he sent me this this recipe and it has
mayonnaise in it and I don't want to do
have anything to do with mayonnaise and
and she sort of you know pushes it aside
in the way that she's writing about it
and that it took her a few days to get
around to making it because she didn't
really want to make it
but then she loves it so I think that
sort of approach is interesting and I
and I wonder if that's just the writing
style of that writer if she approached a
lot of her writing that way
um
so in this bowl I've put flour sugar
this is cocoa powder
salt and baking soda
and I'm just going to whisk that
together and so the other part of her of
her article or column that day was about
the hundred dollar cake and The Story
Goes
uh woman goes to New York City she has
lunch at one of the uh one of the big
hotels she has this cake for for dessert
absolutely loves it goes home all she
can think about is this cake this cake
this cake this cake this cake she writes
the hotel and says I'd love to have the
recipe for that cake I'll even pay for
it
so of course the hotel obliges with the
recipe sends it to her and then sends
her a bill for 100 bucks
she needed to pay for the she needed to
pay for the recipe a hundred dollars and
so it was it was a chocolate cake but it
was not the mayonnaise cake the
mayonnaise cake was a separate part of
this article there were two completely
separate stories
this recipe disappears I cannot find any
mention of it between this first
appearance in 1945 in any of the
newspapers or ephemera until 1948.
in 1948 it comes back with a vengeance
it comes back we would today we would
call it viral today we would call it
viral it comes back in a big way and it
is in every newspaper across the United
States essentially exactly the same
recipe a little bit different amounts
for the cocoa powder but that's about it
and people at that point start calling
it the hundred dollar cake
the two stories have been mixed together
at some point between 1945 and 1948.
and people have have mistook this cake
for the hundred dollar cake
but again still 1948 no mention of of of
Hellman's mayonnaise or Best Foods
mayonnaise because Hellman's and best
foods are the same
brand the same company one is just the
western part of of North America and one
is the eastern part of North America
but in 1948 you see a lot of these
recipes talk about Kraft mayonnaise
and that could just be because Kraft
mayonnaise was available
um continent-wide there was no divide
between the two but there's no mention
of Hellman's mayonnaise at all so I just
put in the vanilla tells me to put the
vanilla in at this point
I would have put the vanilla in the
water
so that it mixes in a little bit better
but who knows
next in is the mayonnaise three quarters
of a cup now this recipe continues on
into the 1950s and into the 1960s the
first time that I can see this recipe
associated with helmets
um is in the late 1960s in some of their
magazine articles
so we need uh
about three quarters of a cup of
mayonnaise
so late 1960s but in the 1950s this
recipe starts to change again
and people start adding raisins now if
you remember in that cake
there are dates and nuts so the addition
of raisins sort of Takes the Cake back a
little bit
um
and I I so I find this fascinating for a
bunch of reasons because there's so much
mythology around the idea of this cake
and where it came from and what it was
about and
I can't substantiate any of that
mythology you know I just I just can't
substantiate it I can't find the
reasoning behind it and you know a lot
of people say that this cake
um
came out of the depression because
people couldn't buy eggs and oil but
somehow they could buy mayonnaise
prepared mayonnaise that doesn't stand
up and in fact in some of the newspaper
articles about this cake people
specifically call it out and say
it is an expensive extravagant cake to
make
so the whole idea that it was something
that was cheap and easy to make uh
during the Depression sort of goes out
the window when you've got people in the
time period saying No this is a really
expensive cake
um you know it's a good cake but it's
really expensive
okay so I'm gonna switch from the Whisk
to a rubber spatula
just to do the last mixing
so in the 1945 article she says that she
was supposed to bake it in a tube pan
but she didn't have a two pans she did
it in I think a nine by nine but you
could do it neither
um I searched downstairs I couldn't find
my two pen but I've got a bundt pan so
I'm gonna I'm gonna pick it in a bundt
pan because why not I think Bundt pans
are kind of fun
and this batter is kind of interesting
to me
there's a couple of other articles that
I read about this cake in the 19 late
1940s early 1950s
and I'm going to be kind of interested
to see what the texture is like
um
but we'll get this in the oven and we'll
get it baked up and we'll see what
happens
into the oven
okay so the final nail in the coffin of
the mythology around it being invented
by the wife of someone who worked at an
executive at Hellman's mayonnaise
is that
in 1948 when this cake is going viral
it's in every newspaper in the United
States and Canada like it is everywhere
Best Foods the parent company of helmets
invites all of the food editors of the
big magazines and newspapers to New York
for a giant dinner where they use
mayonnaise in every dish on the menu and
the editors and the food writers are
talking about oh have you heard about
this new mayonnaise cake it's all the
rage it's it's all the rage
people from Best Foods didn't know
anything about it
they didn't know anything about it hey
glad it's time for the next cake it's
time for the next cake the new old girl
you already have Forks the new old cake
the new old cakes hey friends
um this is part of a series that's the
cake from 1927. it was quite good if you
watched it from last week yes it is the
old old cake this is the new old cake
um
it's now perfect it's such a perfect
shape it is it is it's so Roundy now the
the 1945 recipe
um
doesn't give a frosting or an icing
so it's still really moist it's not
super chocolatey
I think it's missing the dates I know
that's going to sound funny right I
think it's missing the dates the dates
really brought something to that that
earlier cake
so as this okay that being said it's
still a lovely cake it is a lovely cake
the texture is amazing really nice
texture so the 1945 recipe she says you
know you could ice it any way you want I
didn't want to ice it because I wanted
to taste the cake to give a decent
comparison
as this kick moves forward in time
the cocoa is removed and solid melted
chocolate is put in which would change
the chocolate flavor yes
by 1962 as I mentioned in the last
episode this cake is viewed as
old-fashioned and so the recipe columns
call it old-fashioned but the way to
update the cake is to put raisins in it
which takes you back to the 1927 version
so what have we learned
what what have we learned that's a great
question I have learned that the
mythology of most things that you think
of are probably false
that's fair in this case most of the
mythology cannot be proven
that the idea that this is called the
100 cake
is false
because it was a misassociation between
two parts of the same earlier
um
column that introduced this recipe
that this recipe when it's introduced in
1945 is just that recipe without
the dates and the and the so the dates
it reminds me of how often you have
someone pull onto a video I just
invented this and it's like no here it
is it's just looks from you know 1742.
it's just something
it's the same thing cycling over and
over and over again maybe with a tweak
and The Tweak was to remove the fruit
and nuts which then gets added back in
in the 1960s
um what else did we learn I learned all
kinds of stuff I learned that I went
down a rabbit hole on this one very deep
very deeply very deep rabbit hole and
that um
on the surface It's Not What It Seems
but it's a great cake
there you go so you know any of these
three cakes I would I would make and eat
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon