Does adding matcha to mayonnaise change the taste as much as the look?

Matchonnaise!

The powdered green tea known as matcha has already proven itself to be much more than a mere drink mix. A legend in the realm of sweets and baked goods, it has even been used to enhance the likes of beer and curry.

Just recently, our reporter Udonko learned that matcha could be mixed with mayonnaise. At first, the two foods seem to have highly distinct and conflicting tastes, but we’ve seen some pretty weird combinations in the past so it might just be crazy enough to work.

Udonko looked up a recipe from the website of Kyoto-based tea maker Marukyu Koyama-en. It just said to mix some matcha with any commercially available mayonnaise, but it was good to have some expert confirmation on that.

▼ Despite getting her info from Marukyu Koyama, Udonko used a pack of Itoen matcha instead.

There was no mention of what the matcha-mayo ratio ought to be, but she just eyeballed it. Once it looked like the matcha in the mayo was reaching critical mass, she stopped.

It was certainly given a visually dramatic new look. Most people probably wouldn’t even recognize it as mayonnaise from appearance alone.

But it ultimately would boil down to taste, so Udonko gathered four foods commonly topped with mayonnaise: sausage, broccoli, hardboiled egg, and tuna.

She tried the sausage first and a simple dip into the matcha-mayo instantly transformed it into an otherworldly hors d’oeuvres that seemed to glow green.

However, her first bite was shockingly ordinary. It just tasted like normal mayonnaise on sausage with hardly a hint of matcha’s signature bitterness. Only when the mayo came into direct contact with her tongue could she detect it, but otherwise it was overpowered completely by the other flavors.

Next up was the broccoli, and the bright green sauce looked more at home on the verdant veggie.

Again, Udonko received a shock from her first bite. This time the matcha flavor was front and center as its bitter notes struck a balance with the tangy taste of the mayo. It was a richer flavor than the sausages, either because of the relative blandness of the broccoli or the larger surface area.

By the time the egg’s turn came, Udonko was getting used to the color. The matcha once again went into hiding for this matchup. She tried adding more sauce but the creamy egg seemed to neutralize most of it, leaving little but a faint aroma of it as she ate.

Finally, the tuna was paired with the tuna mayo. Considering stronger-tasting foods like sausage tend to weaken the impact of the matcha, she wasn’t expecting much from the heavily seasoned fish but to her surprise not only was the green tea subdued, it was completely wiped out!

In the end, the effect of mixing matcha with mayonnaise has a lot to do with the food you’re topping with it. Each one in Udonko’s taste test was unique but none of it was bad by any means. At worst it just tasted like normal mayonnaise.

So, this is a fun little food adventure for those who don’t like to take big risks. Our writer would recommend the egg as a good entry point because it revealed just enough of the matcha taste to understand it before committing to it more. If you do like it, then we recommend making our original Mucho Macho Matcha Tacos to take things to the next level.

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