Ashley Strickland Freeman follows the Duke’s Real Mayonnaise diet.
Whether it is to make a three-layer strawberry-rhubarb cake or rum-spiked Bananas Foster bread moist, peach-filled crepes extra soft or Nashville hot chicken pieces tender and serve them with fluffy buttermilk cornbread waffles, the zippy condiment is her secret ingredient.
“I grew up with Duke’s and really didn’t know about any other kind of mayo until I went to culinary school in New York,” says the Charleston, South Carolina, resident. “It was the only mayo my family ever used.”
After earning a degree in journalism and one in culinary arts from the French Culinary Institute in New York City, she worked at the Oxmoor House test kitchens in Birmingham, Alabama. That’s when she realized she could pursue a career in food without being a chef. So she turned to writing recipes for cookbooks and becoming a food editor and food stylist.
That led to the dream of writing her own cookbook, but she didn’t have a platform or a theme. It was Duke’s that came to her rescue.