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Mayonnaise Cream Dressing
Make a mayonnaise dressing of the yolk of 1 egg, lemon juice, salad-oil, and seasoning, as directed before. When ready to serve, add 1/2 cupful of whipped cream to 1 cupful of the mayonnaise dressing.
This is a finishing step rather than a stand-alone recipe: it lightens a finished mayonnaise with whipped cream, giving what French kitchens call a sauce mousseline. The ratio is 2:1 mayonnaise to cream.
- The base dressingOne egg yolk will emulsify roughly a cupful of oil, about the quantity of mayonnaise this recipe calls for. The proportions and seasoning are not given here: the recipe refers back to the book's master mayonnaise, so lemon juice and seasoning are to taste.
- CupfulIn books of this period a cupful is generally 8 fluid ounces, the same as a modern measuring cup. The 1/2 cupful appears to be cream measured before whipping, which will roughly double in volume.
- Fold, do not stirWhip the cream to soft peaks only and fold it in with a spatula in a few strokes. Beating it in knocks out the air and can break the mayonnaise, leaving a thin, oily sauce.
- "When ready to serve" is literalCream-lightened mayonnaise slackens and can weep as it stands, sooner in a warm room. Fold it together shortly before it goes to the table.
- Unsweetened creamUse plain heavy cream with nothing added. Modern ultra-pasteurised cream is slower to whip and holds less firmly; avoid pre-sweetened whipped toppings entirely.
- Raw yolkNothing in this dressing is cooked. If serving children, older guests, or anyone pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs or a pasteurised-egg mayonnaise as the base.
- Yield and useAbout 2 cups once the cream is folded in. Dressings of this kind were commonly served with delicate salads such as fruit, chicken, moulded aspics and cold asparagus, though this recipe specifies no use.
Thinning mayonnaise with whipped cream is the household form of what French cookery usually calls mayonnaise chantilly (the name sauce mousseline is more often attached to hollandaise lightened with cream), and versions of it appear in American cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, when the composed luncheon salad was in fashion. Mayonnaise was still made by hand at home in this period, and the recipe refers back to the master dressing rather than repeating it. The cream would have softened the acidity and oiliness for the fruit and jellied salads then popular, and it also extended a cupful of beaten dressing.