Evaporated milk mayonnaise whisks easily and quickly.

I generally dislike mayonnaise, and usually try to avoid it. I also tend to avoid even good recipes that use mayonnaise, because it means I’m going to have a jar of mayonnaise sitting in the refrigerator for several months and probably over a year, unused. That means that I almost always only have egg salad sandwiches and chicken salad sandwiches, two of my favorites, when I’m eating out.

National Sandwich Day is on Friday, and this year’s National Sandwich Day post will fix that problem.

Most mayonnaise recipes call for eggs. Even the one-egg versions make more mayonnaise than I need or want. What ends up happening is that when I do make a recipe that calls for mayonnaise, I start making other recipes that call for mayonnaise until I run out.

So when I saw this recipe for mayonnaise in Mary Lee Taylor’s Tempting Low Cost Meals, I was intrigued. Unlike most mayonnaise recipes, there is nothing indivisible in this one. That, in fact, is the point of the book: the subtitle is “for 2 or 4 or 6” and most recipes include a variation for two people, for four people, and for six people. The recipes are meant specifically to make great meals with little to no leftovers.

It’s a fascinating book.

Most of the time, the difference between the two or three variations is that the book does all of the math for you. In this recipe, simply double or triple the amounts for the four- or six-person version. There are minor variations, but I suspect they’re just to make the measurements easier rather than because of any changes made necessary by the change in quantity. For example, it calls for ¼ teaspoon pepper instead of 3⁄16 teaspoons in the six-person version, and it calls for ⅓ cup evaporated milk instead of six tablespoons in the four-person version¹.

It’s a great mayonnaise for simple salads.

And a great mayonnaise for potato salad—as in this roast root vegetable potato salad.

The two-person version makes ¾ cup of mayonnaise, a good amount for many salads. I could just as well half the recipe again to end up with a little over a quarter cup of mayo.

Another nice thing about this recipe is that it’s easy. It requires no special tools other than a whisk and a bowl. I am horrible at things that require whisking; half the reason I bought a Kitchen Aid is to make meringues and to make whipped cream. I avoid single-purpose kitchen tools like the plague, but I also own an iSi whipped cream maker solely because I can’t whip cream to save my life. But even for me this recipe takes but a few minutes of whisking for perfectly-textured mayonnaise, as you can see in the photo.

I was worried that the lack of egg yolk would mean a bland flavor. It doesn’t. I like this mayonnaise a lot more than I like other mayonnaises, commercial or homemade. And being homemade, besides being easily customizable by quantity it’s also easily customizable as far as flavor is concerned. You want more paprika? Add more paprika!² Depending on your needs, you might also add a little saffron, a little garlic, maybe even your favorite chili powder or curry powder. And if your experimentation turns out inedible or merely not as good as you’d like, toss it and start over. It takes no time and very little work.

It’s a great recipe for salads, from lettuce to potato, but the combination of ease and customizability makes this recipe perfect for sandwiches. While I never put mayonnaise directly on my sandwiches, there are a lot of wonderful sandwich fillings that use mayonnaise. From egg salad to tuna salad, chicken salad to garlic spread, mayonnaise is a foundational ingredient in some of the best sandwiches. I no longer have to go out to eat just for an egg salad sandwich.