Miracle Whip® is a condiment manufactured by Kraft Foods. It is used both as a salad dressing and a sandwich spread, like its closely related cousin, mayonnaise. The two foods are closely related enough to be topics of acrimony, as many people have a strong preference for either mayonnaise or Miracle Whip®. In any event, Miracle Whip® is typically available at large markets, and Kraft offers a number of packaging options including squeeze bottles for cooks in a hurry.

The history of Miracle Whip® begins in 1931, when a man named Max Crosset developed a salad dressing he called Mac Crosset's X-tra Fine Salad Dressing in Salem, Illinois. Crosset used the dressing in his eponymous cafe, later selling it to Kraft Foods. Kraft introduced Miracle Whip® to the general public in 1933, at the Chicago World's Fair, where Kraft constructed a complete sterile kitchen enclosed in glass so that visitors to the fair could watch the production of Miracle Whip®.

Kraft claims that this condiment is named for the machine which was developed for mass production of Miracle Whip®. Like mayonnaise, Miracle Whip® is an emulsion of eggs, oil, and sugars, but it is somewhat tricky to blend the emulsion to the desired consistency. An enterprising Kraft engineer developed a machine which could blend the ingredients properly, dubbing it the “Miracle Whip,” and the name apparently caught on with Kraft management.

This product has a naturally sweet flavor, as you will discover if you taste it side by side with mayonnaise. It is often used as a replacement for mayonnaise, because it is much lower in fat than traditional mayonnaise. Miracle Whip® can be spread on sandwiches, blended into salad dressings, mixed with other ingredients to create a dip, and used in a variety of other ways, depending on personal taste.

You may have experienced a taste of the Miracle Whip® vs mayonnaise debate for yourself. Many people grow up in a household which eats one or the other, acquiring a fondness which is hard to break. The two products are in fact different, so it is perhaps not surprising that people sometimes express a strong preference for mayonnaise or Miracle Whip®.