The cake became even more popular when editors and cooks started marketing it as a “$100 chocolate mayonnaise cake.” In 1951, Winnifred Jardine, a columnist at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, shared a recipe for this cake, which she picked up at a conference in Chicago. The $100 cake recipe, which was published in several newspapers from that era, was rumored to have originated from New York City’s glamorous Waldorf Astoria hotel. An article in The Huntsville Times from 1949, however, reveals that the original $100 cake from the hotel had no mayonnaise in it at all, unlike the recipe Jardine shared two years later. Rather, it relied on butter, eggs, and milk for moisture. Thanks to a long game of telephone, the chocolate cake from the hotel had somehow become conflated with the mayonnaise cake, boosting the popularity of an odd-sounding cake.
The cake was a hit among homemakers. Companies marketed it as a quicker, easier, and more affordable way to bake, with headlines like “Gain Speed With Mayonnaise Cake,” and advertising text like “Mayonnaise cake is on the lips and mouth [sic] of many women these days. Easy to make, it must be good!” In 1961, Hellmann’s added a cake recipe to the back of its mayonnaise jars. Soon the company was running advertisem*nts for mayonnaise cake in newspapers and magazines, claiming its product was the secret to a moister, richer cake.
But does the condiment actually produce a better cake?
In a 2001 piece for the Los Angeles Times, food writer Marion Cunningham noted, “The use of mayonnaise, which seems puzzling in a cake, does two things: It gives the cake a luscious richness, and it keeps it moist and fresh tasting for much longer than a conventional cake.”
Although I can’t find proof that mayonnaise makes a longer-lasting cake, the sentiment that the condiment makes a softer cake is echoed by Rose Levy Beranbaum in her book The Cake Bible, and in an experiment conducted by America’s Test Kitchen, which found that cakes made with mayonnaise were moister than those without it. The emulsion—which happens thanks to the lecithin in egg yolk—helps the fat more evenly and efficiently coat flour particles, making for a softer, moister cake.
I made the Hellmann’s cake one evening recently, with zero expectations. Would it live up to the hype? Would it taste like mayonnaise? The cake was exactly what the company had promised: It was quick, easy, and moist. It took me fewer than 10 minutes to whip everything together in my mixer, and when I asked my husband to guess what the secret ingredient was, he had no idea. Will I ever reveal the secret? Probably not.
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