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Lettuce Salad with Egg Dressing
Rub the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs through a colander; salt to taste, and make a paste by adding 1 dessertspoonful of olive-oil; mix thoroughly, and dilute by adding gradually 1/2 teacupful of lemon juice and 1/2 teacupful of water. Pour over the lettuce. This amount of dressing is sufficient for a large-sized dish of salad.
An egg-yolk dressing from the era before bottled mayonnaise, built on sieved hard-cooked yolks rather than raw ones. It is very lean and very sharp by modern standards, so read the proportions before you commit.
- The hinge: build the paste firstThe yolks must be reduced to a smooth paste with the oil before any liquid goes in. If you add lemon juice or water to loose crumbs of yolk, the dressing will stay grainy and never come together.
- DessertspoonfulTwo teaspoons, halfway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. That is genuinely all the oil in the recipe.
- TeacupfulA period teacup runs 4 to 6 fluid ounces, not the 8-ounce American measuring cup. Half a teacupful is therefore roughly 2 to 3 fluid ounces, about 4 to 6 tablespoons; treat it as a starting point and taste.
- Rub through a colanderA colander with holes large enough to pass egg yolk is not something most kitchens have now. A fine sieve and the back of a spoon, or simply a fork on a plate, does the same work.
- Lemon juiceHalf a teacup will take one to two lemons. Bottled juice tastes flat here because there is nothing else in the dressing to hide behind.
- Expect a thin, sharp dressingWith two teaspoons of oil against equal parts juice and water, this pours rather than clings, and it reads acidic. Modern palates usually want the water cut back or dropped, and more oil.
- Dress at the tableA watery acidic dressing collapses tender lettuce within minutes. Toss immediately before serving and use crisp heads rather than soft leaf lettuce.
- YieldRoughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup, which the original calls enough for a large dish of salad.
- The whitesThree whites are left over. Chop them finely and scatter over the dressed salad if you like; the recipe itself does not say what to do with them.