“Seeing people actually make music with mayonnaise and turning it into a real track has been wild. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does”: A British university just classified mayonnaise as an instrument. And this isn’t an April Fool

The question ‘Is mayonnaise an instrument?’ has beguiled the minds of the greatest thinkers ever since it was first posed by that inimitable starfish Patrick, way back in a 2001 episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. A few days ago, some of Northumbria University’s top minds finally concluded, yes Patrick, it absolutely is.

We know what you’re thinking, ‘Ah - look at the date, this is an obvious April Fool’s gag’, but we’re genuinely reporting hard fact here.

Four of the British university’s professors have come together to explore the ways that mayo could be harnessed as an instrument. Giving a whole new definition to the term 'egghead'.

It's putting academic rigour behind a slightly silly idea which has had a long, viral second life ever since that SpongeBob episode. Becoming a recurring internet meme, TikTok and Instagram Reel creators in particular have been conducting their own research for years.

“Music has always evolved through experimentation,” said Dr Rachael Durkin, the Head of Global Music Technologies at Northumbria University and one of the four co-writers of the report. “When you look at the core principles of how instruments create sound, you realise the possibilities for unconventional materials are endless. Exploring something like mayonnaise isn't just about fun; it challenges our assumptions and invites us to think far more creatively about what music can be.”

In collaboration with leading mayo brand Hellmann’s, the four professors at Norhumbria University have produced an interim report, which breaks down exactly why they’ve agreed that mayo can be an instrument across six distinct categories.

“Organology - the scholarly study of musical instruments - has long recognised that instrument status is not reserved for purpose-built objects,” the report states as part of its breakdown. “What matters is whether an object can produce or modify sound in a controlled, intentional way. Mayonnaise can.”

Further evidence is elaborated upon under various sub-sections which underline that mayo ‘becomes’ an instrument the moment it is played.

Most interestingly, they also highlight that mayo has some distinctive acoustic and material properties, while also citing examples of other out-there, food-based artwork from the likes of Ed Ruscha and Dieter Roth.

“The Hornbostel-Sachs system - the global standard for classifying musical instruments - organises instruments by what vibrates to produce sound. Mayonnaise in a jar, mayonnaise in a squeeze bottle, and mayonnaise without a vessel each behave differently and each maps onto a different part of the classification system. Far from resisting categorisation, mayonnaise turns out to be remarkably versatile: it can be classified in more ways than many conventional instruments.”

In conjunction with this report comes an entirely mayo-constructed track, squeezed, scraped and swirled to life by Andy Arthur Smith. You can hear the results below.

“Seeing people actually make music with mayonnaise and turning it into a real track has been wild. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does,” Smith said of his collaboration with Hellmann’s. “We’re bringing a new texture to music!”

Perhaps the most interesting point on the report is the fourth, which explores in more detail the niche properties of mayo when applied as an instrument;

“Food science and acoustic research shows that mayonnaise has measurable, reproducible acoustic properties shaped by its physical composition. The sounds it produces are not arbitrary - they are determined by its structure as an emulsion. More remarkably, sound actively changes mayonnaise at a physical level, meaning that playing it alters it. This two-way relationship between object and sound is a hallmark of musical instruments.”

While this is all clearly tied to a fun marketing campaign by the mayo giant, the university report does leave us pondering our assumptions about what qualifies as an ‘instrument’ and where the boundaries between music and just making a squidgy-sounding racket lay…

It’s actually got us thinking quite deeply about what else in our fridge could form the basis of our next track.

Northumbria University’s full report should be published shortly. We’ll life the lid and scrape out the findings as soon as it drops.