Having mentioned homemade mayonnaise yesterday, I have had a number of requests for the recipe I use, so here it is:

Mayonnaise with a little black pepper

• 2 large egg yolks
• a generous pinch of salt
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• ¼ pint extra virgin olive oil
• ¼ pint sunflower oil
• apple scrap vinegar (or commercial cider or white wine vinegar)

I use my Kenwood Chef with the balloon whisk attachment. Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature.

1. Put the egg yolks in the bowl with the mustard and salt and whisk up together
2. Very gradually, add the oil (the two sorts mixed together) – just a few drops to begin, whisking on a high speed
3. Very slowly add more oil, whisking all the time until the mayonnaise thickens
4. Once you have a thick mixture, you can add the oil more quickly, but make sure you whisk it all up to combine it well
5. Once combined add vinegar to thin it to the desired consistency. With commercial vinegar a teaspoon might be enough, with homemade you might need a tablespoon or more.
6. Store in the fridge in an air-tight jar.
7. Flavour as desired with, for example, crushed garlic and freshly ground black pepper

You can make it by hand, but it is a slow business and you need to be really patient and add the oil a drop or two at a time until quite a lot of it is combined.

I don’t see any reason you can’t use duck eggs instead of hens eggs. Wherever they come from, though, remember that mayonnaise is not cooked, so you will be eating raw egg.

If you haven’t made your own mayonnaise before, you might be surprised how yellow it is and how rich. As you can see from the recipe, I use half olive oil and this comes shining through in the flavour, so choose oils you like the taste of and play around with the relative amounts of different oils.