Just FYI, making mayonnaise with lemon=good; making mayonnaise with lime=way better. Similarly, making hollandaise with lemon=good, making hollandaise with grapefruit=possibly the best thing ever. That's right, lemon; you're a poor substitute in your own recipes.

This brings me back to my old question of exactly how the lemon became a food product in the first place. I mean, you have to imagine that billions of years ago, primordial man was looking about for something to eat, took the yellow citrus fruit down off the tree (in primitive Florida), took a bite and said "GORALK! ES TOOSOO MAGA PAY!!" which roughly translated means "This is inedibly sour." He would have told his friends, and the concept of lemons as being poor food products would have spread across the human pandemic for millennia to come. Lemons go untouched by man for tens of thousands of years. How is it, then, that sometime in the 16th century, probably in France, some chef said "You know what this fish needs? A bit of lemon." How would he have known?

(I do not exaggerate when I say that this problem has preoccupied me for at least ten years.)