Chocolate mayonnaise cake: The classic recipe is sensational (1985)

Chocolate mayonnaise cake has a longer history than most people realize. The first known recipe appeared in a 1927 edition of the Oakland Tribune, but it was hard times that turned it into a household staple. When wartime rationing made fresh eggs and butter hard to come by in the 1940s, home bakers found that substituting mayonnaise produced a cake that was actually moister and quicker to put together than the original. Mayo made sense as a swap because it’s essentially just eggs and oil — two things already in most cake recipes.

The name alone has always raised eyebrows, which is part of why the recipe kept circulating. Hellmann’s parent company Best Foods got behind it in the late 1930s with a promotional booklet, and by 1961 the recipe had made it onto the Hellmann’s jar itself. The version here dates to 1985, when the brand was still actively promoting the technique — this time built around a boxed cake mix with pudding already in it, making the process even faster.

The recipe is straightforward, with one cup of Hellmann’s real mayonnaise, a chocolate cake mix, water and eggs. The mayo replaces any separately measured oil and does double duty on moisture and richness. The finished mayo cake gives no indication of how it got there — it just tastes like a very good chocolate cake.