Should you put mayo in coffee?

Then in the summer of 2022, a top college football quarterback revealed that he adds mayo to his coffee.

Will Levis drops dimes & drops mayo in his morning coffee 🫣☕️

Built different. @will_levis x @TheCatsPause247 pic.twitter.com/Rbz4gvLDJk

— 247Sports (@247Sports) July 20, 2022

So, seeing how this is a site about coffee, let’s get down to the details. Does it make any sense to put mayo in your coffee, and most importantly, how will it taste?

Why it kinda works

Since Hellmann’s started this debate, I checked their mayo ingredients and it consists of three items: eggs, oil, and vinegar.

Eggs in coffee

Eggs in coffee is not a new thing, though it’s a bit foreign to the American palate. Scandinavian egg coffee, where an egg is mixed in with the coffee grounds is a popular drink.

Vietnamese egg coffee or Cà phê trứng is also a popular drink that combines egg with sweetened condensed milk and then it’s added to coffee as a topping.

Even an eggnog latte is a popular holiday drink that heavily features eggs.

(Idea: Buy some Eggnog Latte syrup from Amazon so you can have that treat year-round!)

Oil in coffee

Oil is also not foreign to coffee. Coffee beans even produce a bit of natural oil that you can often see on the top of your cup.

All kinds of oils have consistently been used in coffee including coconut oil, MCT oil in Bulletproof coffee, and even olive oil.

Vinegar in coffee

Vinegar in coffee is a bit more complicated.

Some kinds of vinegar, like apple cider vinegar, are NOT recommended to be added to coffee because of the combined acetic acid levels.

But other types are not completely foreign to coffee. Balsamic vinegar has been used to make specialty coffee drinks and to pair with cold brew.

Mayonnaise recipes usually use white wine vinegar or even lemon juice.

White wine vinegar doesn’t have a history of being used in coffee. Lemon juice, on the other hand, is a growing trend to include in coffee.

Tips for adding mayo to coffee

If you decide to try mayonnaise in your coffee, here are a few tips that will help.

Less is more.
You can always add more, but you can’t take out what you’ve already added. I’d start with a teaspoon per 8 ounces of coffee and work your way up.

Watch the ingredients
Many store-bought mayos have quite a few added ingredients, so find one (like Hellmann’s) that sticks to the basics, or make it yourself.

Use mayonnaise with lemon or lime juice.
If you can, find one made with lemon or lime juice rather than vinegar. This taste will blend better with coffee. Your best bet may be to make the mayo yourself.

Use a whisk.
Whisking the mayo together with coffee works much better than using a spoon.

Try it with cold brew.
While you can add it to your morning hot coffee, something about the way cold brew tastes with mayo is just a bit better.

How it tastes

Yes, I actually tried adding mayo to my coffee.

The mayo I used was vinegar-based because that’s what I had in the fridge. Using one with just lemon juice would have been better.

For the hot black coffee, before I even took a sip I got the smell of vinegar so that didn’t put my mind in a great spot. When I tasted it, the mayo taste was not strong at all, and while drinkable, it’s definitely not a favorite.

I also tried it in cold brew and this tasted much better. Cold brew tends to be less acidic than drip-brewed coffee, so that match worked better. It really tasted more like I had added cream to the coffee than it did in the hot drink.

Conclusion

Do I think adding mayo to your coffee is a good idea? Not really. It’s something fun to talk about, and I guess if for some reason all you have in your house is coffee and mayonnaise, then sure, combining them is fine.

But, given ALL the millions of other ways to flavor coffee, mayo would rank at the bottom.

Get my free Quick Start Guide: Lattes at Home for signing up for my email list!