No one agrees on where mayonnaise first originated. No one even knows where the word mayonnaise came from. (It may have come from France, but no one is really sure of its etymology.) Still, there are some surprisingly strong opinions on what real mayonnaise contains: eggs, oil, vinegar and water — and the proportions matter; they’re what separates mayonnaise from mere “dressing.” There are actual laws that govern this. But while the recipe’s beginning is lost to time, we know exactly where the sort of shelf-stable mayonnaise you might find on a shelf at Rouses was born: at a church fair in Pennsylvania in 1907, sold by a lady named Amelia Schlorer. Once people got a taste of it, Mrs. Schlorer’s mayonnaise became the cat’s pajamas in the U.S. But, I mean, c’mon, it was made in Pennsylvania, so there was an upper limit on how good it could taste. Then, in the 1920s, a businessman in New Orleans decided it was time to do it right, and Blue Plate was born.
But the story of Blue Plate and the Great Condiment Wars of the 1900s goes back a lot further than that, and has more in common with Game of Thrones than Ratatouille. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends, alliances are forged, and sandwiches get delicious.
It all began with a byproduct of cotton processing called cottonseed oil. Until the late 1800s, cottonseed oil was considered worthless. It was too hard to extract in any meaningful quantity; even if you could, the stuff tasted terrible. You could light it on fire, though, and it would be great for fueling lamps. But by the time someone invented a machine to hull cottonseed, freeing the material within for pressing, the petroleum industry had emerged and conquered the lamp oil market. As a result, the market for the stuff initially exploded (“Cottonseed oil is possible!”), then quickly collapsed (“…but we don’t know what to do with it!”). You couldn’t give cottonseed oil away — which, it turned out, was the perfect price.
In 1899, a food chemist named David Wesson found a way to make cottonseed oil palatable, and with it created a cooking oil called Snowdrift. More widely, however, people just called it Wesson Oil, and it took the world by storm. Then in 1911, an upstart named Procter & Gamble looked at the newfound river of cottonseed oil and devised a product of their own: a vegetable oil they processed into a shortening called Crisco.
During cottonseed oil’s decline, and then its rapid ascent, companies involved in its production joined and split like drunken square dancers. The Virginia-Carolina Chemical Company owned Southern Cotton Oil Company, which had a division called Gulf and Valley Cotton Oil Company, which had been occasional partners with Portsmouth Cotton Oil Refining Company and American Cotton Oil Company. Well, American Cotton Oil eventually merged with the company that would become Best Foods, which you probably know from a little product called Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. Procter & Gamble acquired Portsmouth Cotton Oil Refining Company and struck out with a couple mayonnaises of their own — Dreem and Presto — though both failed in the market. (Mayonnaise just wasn’t their bread and butter.) In the end, it was cottonseed and mayonnaise all the way down.
Few cities benefited from all this more than the city of New Orleans, where all those companies had footprints or facilities. Such was the situation in 1924, when a group of New Orleans investors looked at the Virginia-Carolina Chemical Co. and realized that they were sitting on a gold mine. Virginia-Carolina was in the fertilizer business, and didn’t fully appreciate the potential of its foodstuff subsidiary, the Southern Cotton Oil Company, which owned Wesson’s oil through one of its divisions. So the New Orleans investors raised money and acquired the Southern Cotton Oil Company, merging it with a local cottonseed company called Southport Mill. They renamed their new business the Wesson Oil & Snowdrift Company.
Right away, the owners of the new company had a problem — and an opportunity. Wesson cooking oil was flying off shelves, but what did you do next? Create another oil that would compete with their best-selling product? No, said Charles A. Nehlig, an executive at the company, in what was surely a scene ripped straight from Mad Men. You don’t create another oil. You create new products using the oil you already own. And what was the biggest product in stores at the time? Mrs. Schlorer’s mayonnaise.
Nehlig approached J.B. Geiger, a chemist at his company, to lead the effort. Geiger was the Oppenheimer of condiments. Making mayonnaise was easy, he knew; all it took was a few simple items and a whisk. But making veritable oceans of mayonnaise that could sit in a jar for weeks or months was a much taller order.
The company kicked in five thousand dollars for Nehlig and Geiger to set up shop in a warehouse in Gretna. While Geiger and his research team got to work creating the perfect product, Nehlig labored over what to call it, and how to market it. His wife, Lillie, was fond of the Blue Willow china pattern on a set of plates she had. Blue Plate it was! By 1929, jars of Blue Plate Mayonnaise were being trucked from Gretna as fast as they could make the stuff. Coincidentally, a thousand streetcar workers that year went on strike. Two former streetcar operators, Bennie and Clovis Martin, had opened a coffee stand and restaurant in the French Market, and wanted to support the workers.
“Our meal is free to any members of Division 194,” the brothers wrote in a letter to the union. “We are with you till hell freezes, and when it does, we will furnish blankets to keep you warm.” To feed these poor, hungry boys, they came up with large sandwiches on French bread. And what mayonnaise was on those sandwiches, eventually known as po-boys? You guessed it.
By the late 1930s, Blue Plate Mayonnaise had become so popular that they needed government permission to truck in cottonseed oil to their plant 100 railroad cars at a time. At the start of the Second World War, the Navy bought seven million pounds of Blue Plate product for a half-million dollars — about $11 million today, adjusted for inflation. Soon, the whole world knew about Blue Plate.
It had, by then, become its own full division of Wesson-Snowdrift. (Blue Plate also tried things like coffee and peanut butter.) Nehlig, Geiger and others laid the cornerstone of the Blue Plate Mayonnaise Factory Building in the Gert Town neighborhood of New Orleans in 1941, opening for business in 1943. It was designed by celebrated local architect August Perez, Jr. in the “Streamline Moderne” style of Art Deco, with its white façade, curved corners and long windows. The building remains a stunner. In 2008, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its historical importance and architectural significance. In 2012, it was renovated into an apartment complex, Blue Plate Artist Lofts.
The manic desire for companies to control the world’s greatest mayonnaise continued well into the 1960s, when Hunt Foods and Industries acquired Blue Plate, resulting in a $300 million California-based food giant. No one around here liked that, but in 1974, New Orleans-based Wm. B. Reily & Company brought the mayo back to town, when it acquired Blue Plate for our city, as well as the historic factory. And Reily’s is an interesting story unto itself. Founded in 1902 by William B. Reily, its product line has grown to include Swans Down Cake Flour, Luzianne Coffee and Tea and, of course, Blue Plate. Since the day they opened their doors, the Reily family has run the company as a family business. Its current president and CEO is William B. Reily IV.
Changing hands? That’s just how it is in the rough and tumble world of mayonnaise. But in the end, it’s only right that a New Orleans family should own such an iconic New Orleans-born brand.
