Home › The Principles of Cookery › Salad Sauce, Mayonnaise
Salad Sauce, Mayonnaise
Put the yolk of an egg carefully freed from the white into a basin, and take away the speck. Beat the yolk lightly, add a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper, pour some oil upon it, drop by drop at first, and at the same time beat the sauce lightly and quickly. When it begins to thicken slightly increase the quantity of oil, and continue beating until it forms a thick, smooth, yellow paste. Add gradually as much white-wine vinegar as will suit the palate. The quantity required will, of course, vary considerably, according to individual taste. The correct proportion is one tea-spoonful of vinegar to eight of oil. Keep the sauce in a cool place till wanted. A little tarragon vinegar will greatly improve this excellent sauce.
A textbook hand-whisked mayonnaise, and one of the few Victorian sauces that needs no updating at all — only a few explanations.
- The hinge: oil speedEverything depends on adding the first oil literally drop by drop while whisking without pause. Until the emulsion has visibly thickened, any oil added faster than the yolk can absorb it will break the sauce. Once it holds, you can move to a thin steady stream.
- "Take away the speck"Probably the germ spot or the whitish chalaza cord on the yolk, along with any clinging white; either interferes with a smooth emulsion, so lift it out with the tip of a spoon.
- Proportions and yieldOne tea-spoonful of vinegar to eight of oil is the ratio, not the quantity. A single yolk will carry about 3/4 to 1 cup (175–250 ml) of oil comfortably, giving roughly a cup of finished sauce — enough for a salad for four to six.
- What "oil" meantSalad oil in a book of this date is olive oil, and a fairly mild one. Modern extra-virgin can turn bitter under vigorous whisking; a light olive oil, or half olive and half a neutral oil, is closer to the intended flavour.
- TemperatureYolk and oil should both be at room temperature. A yolk straight from the refrigerator emulsifies sluggishly and is a common cause of a split sauce.
- If it splitsStart a fresh yolk in a clean basin and beat the broken mixture into it drop by drop, exactly as you did the oil. Nothing is lost.
- Raw eggThe yolk is never cooked. Use the freshest egg you can, and pasteurised egg or pasteurised yolk if you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised.
- Keeping"A cool place" meant a larder, not a refrigerator, and the recipe assumes the sauce will be used soon after making. Refrigerate and use within two or three days; it will stiffen when cold and can be loosened with a few drops of water or vinegar.
- Tarragon vinegarWorth the trouble, and easily made by steeping a few sprigs of fresh tarragon in white-wine vinegar for a week. Failing that, a teaspoon of chopped tarragon whisked in at the end gives much the same effect.
Mayonnaise arrived in English cookery from France in the early nineteenth century and by the 1870s, when Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was assembled, it had become a standard dressing of the fashionable table — hence its appearance there as an entry headed "Salad Sauce, Mayonnaise". The name's origin is disputed: it is variously traced to Mah\1756, and to the old French moyeu, meaning egg yolk. The sauce is often described as an exercise in emulsion, a demonstration that oil and vinegar could be made to hold together permanently by the action of a yolk and a wrist. Before mechanical whisks and blenders this was hard, sustained work, which is why Victorian instructions insist so firmly on the drop-by-drop discipline that a machine now conceals.