Fats and Oils

When I took French in school, as part of the immersion experience, we each had to cook something from the country. My French textbook featured a two-page-long description on making mayonnaise. The goal of this exercise wasn’t really learning the proper way to cook French food; it was a lesson in composing verbs and tenses properly. So you can guess what happened. The mayonnaise didn’t turn out quite right; it simply refused to thicken (my mom salvaged it). A few years later, I would learn the basics of mayonnaise well, in a surprising place: my chemistry class.