Why Aioli Isn’t Just Fancy Mayo - And Why It Matters

Chicken sandwich with a chipotle aioli, side of fries with a truffle aioli—every restaurant today has a menu item with a flavored variant of aioli. When it comes to the table, it looks like colored mayonnaise. Is aioli just a trendy name for mayo? Well, it’s complicated.

Aioli is a culinary creation shared by many ancient Mediterranean cultures like the Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians that dates back over 2,500 years. Historically, it is a sauce of raw garlic pulverized with extra virgin olive oil. The garlic is mashed in a mortar and pestle, then the oil is slowly added to create an emulsion. A few drops of lemon juice or warm water can be added to help emulsify the sauce.

Aioli is traditionally made in a mortar and pestle. It can take 10 to 15 minutes of effort to pulverize and emulsify the sauce.

The name aioli literally means garlic and oil. It comes from Provence, modern-day southern France, where the word ail (garlic) and oli (oil) combine to form aioli. In Spain, it is called allioli, and Italians call it aglio e olio. These all translate exactly the same: garlic and oil.

Mayonnaise is also a cold emulsion that hails from France. The prevailing theory for the naming of the sauce is that after capturing the capital city of Menorca, Mahón, in 1756, the Duke of Richelieu’s private chef invented sauce mahonnaise in honor of the victory. The key difference between mayonnaise and traditional aioli is the addition of egg yolk. The base of mayonnaise is egg yolk and neutral oil, with the addition of an acidic emulsifier like Dijon mustard, lemon juice, or vinegar.

Mayonnaise is an emulsion of egg yolk and oil that can be flavored with additional ingredients. It comes together in a few minutes and tools like immersion blenders and stand mixers can be used to speed up the process.

Aioli was never used to describe a flavored mayonnaise because, well… that isn’t what aioli is. Then, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the UK and USA saw a rising trend of upscale casual dining and Mediterranean-inspired restaurants. The traditional garlic-heavy flavor of aioli could be mimicked by adding garlic to mayonnaise. This replaced the labor-intensive pulverizing and emulsifying of a fragile sauce and created a quick, stable way to provide a similar flavor and texture in large batches. Eventually, one restaurant dared to call their garlic mayonnaise “aioli” to invoke a more artisanal, Mediterranean feel—and the trend took off. By the 2000s, the word aioli just meant “fancy mayo.” From trendy upscale restaurants to food trucks, you could find chipotle aioli, truffle aioli, basil aioli—the list goes on. I think the funniest variation is garlic aioli, because it proves we’ve forgotten what aioli ever was… garlic aioli means “garlic garlic oil.”

If you see aioli on a menu, you're almost guaranteed to get a mayonnaise-based sauce with the addition of some specified flavor. People like to believe that they are more elegant and sophisticated than they really are. The rise of aioli as a catch-all term isn’t just culinary laziness—it reflects something deeper: our desire to feel authentic without doing the work it takes to actually be authentic. In a world obsessed with shortcuts and appearance, calling flavored mayo aioli is just another way we dress up convenience as true craft.

But every now and then, you taste something real. If you ever get the chance to try a true aioli—made by hand with nothing but garlic and olive oil—you’ll know. It’s not just a sauce. It’s a reminder that simplicity isn’t the enemy of sophistication. In fact, done well, it might be the purest form of it.