Chapter 205: Making Mayonnaise
“Actually, this salad dressing really doesn’t need so many people.” Xiang Chuan directed the kitchen AI to fetch the ingredients she needed while kindly persuading the Class Eight Grade One crowd who came to “watch,” “This thing hardly requires any cooking. After Yating and the other two of them process the ingredients with me and stir them, it’ll be pretty much done.”
This was the absolute truth. The mayonnaise that Xiang Chuan planned to make later had raw materials that were very easy to process ingredients.
“Classmate Xiang Chuan, what you’re saying isn’t right.” Class President Lu Daiqing pushed up his decorative glasses. “You once swore confidently to Classmate Ouyang and the others that ‘fried egg is a very easy dish to make,’ but after the three of them actually operated it, they spent several times the time you expected before learning to make a passing fried egg.”
“Before the school anniversary, we made egg pancakes under your guidance, and that also took more than a week. During field training, we clearly learned your ingredient processing techniques right away, but making any kind of dish was a first-hand experiential process for all of us. What you think is simple next might not be so for us.”
“Moreover, don’t forget our class motto—”
—If you don’t try, you’re doomed to fail.
Class President Lu Daiqing’s rare long speech successfully shut Xiang Chuan up. She sighed lightly in her heart, truly not knowing whether teaching this famous quote to the young ones in the class for unity of knowledge and action learning was good or bad.
From the current perspective, this group in the class already had the potential to make Class Eight Grade One the most eye-catching standout in the entire grade or even the entire school.
Was this really good or bad? If she led this group astray, their parents wouldn’t have opinions, right?
Harboring a bit of unease, Xiang Chuan began directing the kitchen AI to transport the ingredients over.
——
What Xiang Chuan planned to make this time was regular mayonnaise.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t make other salad dressings, but whether sesame paste or vinegar dressing, they all required olive oil or sesame paste, soy sauce and the like, which in the modern era were either not yet mass produced or whose raw materials hadn’t even been seen.
Mayonnaise, as the name suggests, was mainly egg yolk.
Although this thing had an extremely high oil content, it was still particularly picky about the type of oil. The cooking oil stocked in modern people’s kitchens was converted via material conversion technology. From her student days experience circling around Mother in the kitchen and actual tasting experience, Xiang Chuan concluded: the sample of this thing was absolutely peanut oil.
Xiang Chuan once fell into doubt: Since they were using such advanced technology as material conversion, why not switch to lard?
Thinking about it later, considering pork’s status in modern people’s minds even lower than freshwater fish before, she let it go.
In the past, modern people only needed to make solid food and liquid food, with simple production processes, so they had no pursuit of oil types.
Xiang Chuan: Alright then, only 21st century people pursue dietary life, huh?
Previously, Xiang Chuan had been doing simple cooking deep frying and wasn’t picky about oil types, but now that it was salad dressing, she was in a dilemma.
Because what paired with salad dressing was either heavy oil heavy salt fried things or vegetables fruit like today, so salad dressings other than vinegar dressing mostly had the trait of being refreshing and grease-cutting with one bite, but greasy if eaten too much. Therefore, when making salad dressing, it basically used relatively mild-tasting oils like olive oil or corn oil.
This wouldn’t be a problem in the 21st century, but now it was 30,000 years later.
Corn and olives were probably still lying in some corner of the botanical garden!
So the only priority Xiang Chuan could consider was mayonnaise that could find substitutes.
The types of materials to prepare were slightly numerous: eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, white vinegar, salt, clean water.
Actually, the hardest part of the entire manufacturing steps was the first step—extracting the egg yolk!
Xiang Chuan cracked the eggs into a bowl, then picked up two spoons, scooping the egg yolks with both hands and placing them into another empty bowl.
After repeating three or four times, Xiang Chuan looked at the Class Eight Grade One crowd around her with an uneasy gaze and said, “Can you all separate the egg yolks from the egg whites like this?”
It wasn’t that she was worried about them failing and messing up; if separation failed, they could just make a few more portions of stir-fried tomatoes and eggs or egg fried rice with double eggs in the dinner menu.
As a result, as soon as she said this, Ainuo standing beside her asked in a puzzled face, “Can’t you just let the kitchen AI do this job?”
When making liquid food before, to ensure viscous texture, flour and rice needed sifting, other vegetables were juiced and filtered—meaning the kitchen AI had sifting equipment, so filtering egg whites could completely be handed to the kitchen AI.
And it wouldn’t carry over as much egg white as when Xiang Chuan did it by hand.
Xiang Chuan: “…”
Why didn’t you say so earlier!—
After the blunder, Xiang Chuan could only turn her head and continue to the next step.
She put into a large bowl in sequence two egg yolks, sugar, salt, flour, and milk, then quickly stirred to mix evenly until the flour particles in the bowl completely disappeared to the naked eye, then she added about 10 milliliters of white vinegar and continued beating for a while.
At this time, the boiling water that Xiang Chuan had just instructed the kitchen AI to prepare was also ready. She placed this large bowl over the boiling water, directing the kitchen AI to stir at a faster frequency than her, while commanding and adjusting the power based on the kitchen AI’s beating speed.
No choice, previously Xiang Chuan always used an egg beater; she didn’t know if the kitchen AI’s stirring frequency was suitable, so she could only use her own speed as a sample and slowly adjust the rate.
Fortunately, with Xiang Chuan’s data for comparison, at least there was no tragedy of the mixture shooting out in all directions upon stirring. After more than five minutes, the liquid in the bowl took on a milk paste state, and Xiang Chuan quickly called to stop.
Xiang Chuan glanced at her personal terminal; there was more than an hour until dinner, which was just right for the mayonnaise consumption time. Xiang Chuan quickly had the kitchen AI put her portion of mayonnaise into the refrigerator.
As she turned her head, she saw the Class Eight Grade One crowd already eager to try.
This group was usually assigned by Xiang Chuan to cut vegetables and wash vegetables, but stirring jobs like this were really rare; it was truly wow cool wow cool!
Seeing this group of young ones full of energy, Xiang Chuan originally planned to speak up and let the kitchen AI take over the remaining mayonnaise manufacturing work, but now she couldn’t open her mouth. After hesitating for a long time, she could only squeeze out: “Don’t stir too vigorously.”
Stirring slowly wasn’t an issue; worst case let the kitchen AI help finish it, but if stirred too fast too long leading to oil-water separation at the end, then it really couldn’t be saved—maybe it could, but Xiang Chuan couldn’t pull out her personal terminal in public and open Geegle to search “how to remedy oil-water separation when making mayonnaise”!
Having received Xiang Chuan’s command (Xiang Chuan: I’m not, I didn’t, don’t talk nonsense), the crowd immediately cheered and dispersed.
Xiang Chuan stood in the corner watching the Class Eight Grade One crowd bustle about starting to tinker with the mayonnaise, staring at their hand movements while frantically recalling recipes she had seen online before.
Mainly because the remaining egg whites from making mayonnaise shouldn’t go to waste.
