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Mayonnaise of Salmon
To one can of salmon minced fine mix a dressing made as follows: Yolk of one raw egg, spoonful of mustard, four tablespoonfuls of oil, one tablespoonful vinegar, pinch of salt, very little cayenne pepper. Put mustard in with the egg, stir one way, and add oil drop by drop. Then beat until creamy. When stiff add the vinegar, then pepper, and lastly salt. Garnish the dish with parsley or celery tops.
A plain hand-beaten mayonnaise folded through canned salmon, in the style of the cold luncheon salads that filled turn-of-the-century salad chapters. The dressing is the whole exercise; get the emulsion right and the rest is assembly.
- The hinge: oil drop by dropThe first tablespoon of oil must go in almost literally a drop at a time, with constant beating, or the emulsion will never take. Once it thickens and looks glossy you can pour in a thin steady stream. Four tablespoons of oil to one yolk is a modest ratio, so the finished dressing will be soft rather than stiff.
- If it breaksStart a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the split mixture into it drop by drop, exactly as you did the oil. Cold ingredients split more readily; bring the egg and oil to room temperature first.
- "Stir one way"A period conviction with no basis in chemistry — direction of stirring has no effect on the emulsion. What matters is that the beating is continuous and the oil arrives slowly.
- Raw yolkThe dressing is never heated. Use pasteurised eggs, or the freshest you can get, and keep the finished salad refrigerated and eat it the same day. Anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised should skip an uncooked-yolk dressing.
- MustardA "spoonful of mustard" is unspecified; in American recipes of this period it most often meant dry mustard powder, which also helps stabilise the emulsion. Read it as roughly a teaspoon. Prepared mustard will work but adds vinegar and slackens the dressing.
- The oilA period cook would have used olive oil or a bland "salad oil." Extra-virgin olive oil can taste bitter when worked hard, especially in a machine; a neutral oil, or half neutral and half olive, gives a cleaner result with canned fish.
- SalmonA can of salmon of this era was commonly the 1-lb tall tin. Modern tins are often 6-7.5 oz, so you may need two; a single large 14.75 oz can will also do. Pick out skin and the soft vertebrae if you object to them, though they were eaten as a matter of course.
- Yield and servingEnough for four as a light lunch course. Serve cold on a bed of lettuce, with the parsley or celery tops around the edge; it also makes a good sandwich filling.
Canned salmon was one of the great cheap protein revolutions of the late nineteenth century — Pacific Northwest canneries were shipping it across North America and to Britain in enormous volume by the 1890s, and it turned a luxury fish into a pantry staple that any household could keep on a shelf. "Mayonnaise of" as a dish title is borrowed from French service, where a mayonnaise de saumon or de volaille meant cold cooked flesh masked or bound with the sauce and presented as a salad entrée. What this recipe records is the moment the two met: a genteel French formula applied to a tin, with a hand-beaten dressing. Salad chapters of the period are full of such pages, and they explain why so many books of the era teach the drop-by-drop emulsion in such careful detail.