Potato salad, pimento cheese, deviled eggs — besides being delicious, all of these beloved southern dishes have one thing in common: they rely on high-quality mayonnaise. Given the eggy emulsion's key role in so many regional staple foods, it's no surprise that Southerners take mayonnaise very seriously. Although mayonnaise as we know it most likely originated in 18th-century France or Spain (a subject of much debate among the French and the Spanish), the South can confidently take credit as the birthplace of Duke's, the favorite mayonnaise brand of millions of Americans, and what many Southerners consider the only store-bought mayonnaise worth slathering.
Duke's Mayo was founded by Eugenia Duke, an astute culinary genius and businesswoman born in Columbus, Georgia in 1881. After marrying and moving to Greenville, South Carolina, Duke started selling sandwiches made with her famous to soldiers at Fort Sevier in 1917. By 1918, Duke had sold a whopping 11,000 sandwiches.
She shed the bread to focus solely on mayonnaise in 1923, and in 1926, Duke opened her first official mayonnaise plant. What makes Duke's mayonnaise special? The less mayo-obsessed may argue that all store-bought mayonnaise tastes the same, but Southerners know this is simply not true. Duke's is condiment aisle royalty for several reasons.
For one thing, it does not contain any sugar. The lack of added sugar was a feature of Eugenia Duke's original recipe (possibly as a result of wartime sugar rationing), and.
