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Vinaigrette Sauce
To 1/4 cupful of plain or tarragon vinegar add 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, 1/4 teaspoonful paprika, a dash of cayenne and of white pepper. Mince 1 tablespoonful each of pickles, chives, parsley, green pepper; stir into the vinegar, then add slowly 1/2 cupful of olive oil.
A cold sauce of the ravigote type, built to be spooned over cold shellfish rather than tossed with salad greens. It comes together in a bowl in five minutes; the only technique worth attention is how the oil goes in.
- The hinge: add the oil slowlyWhisk the oil into the seasoned vinegar in a thin stream so it breaks into fine droplets and thickens slightly. Dumped in at once it separates immediately and the sauce runs off the shellfish instead of clinging.
- ProportionsTwo parts oil to one part vinegar, which is sharper than the modern 3:1 default. If it tastes aggressive, the fix is more oil rather than less salt.
- YieldAbout a cup once the minced aromatics are counted in. It will not hold an emulsion overnight; whisk again before serving.
- PicklesThe unqualified "pickles" of the period most likely meant sour cucumber pickles rather than sweet ones. Cornichons or a firm dill pickle give the right acid bite; bread-and-butter pickles will throw the balance.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth using. If you only have white wine vinegar, steep a bruised sprig of tarragon in a quarter cup of it for an hour and strain.
- Mince fineAll four aromatics should be cut to roughly the same small dice so no single one dominates a spoonful. Chives are cut, not chopped, or they bruise and go slimy.
- Paprika and cayenneA quarter teaspoon of paprika is mostly colour; a sweet paprika is the safest choice. Smoked paprika, which only became widely available outside Spain in recent decades, will overwhelm raw shellfish.
- Salt timingDissolve the salt in the vinegar before any oil goes in; once the oil is in, the crystals dissolve only slowly.
Vinaigrette in the older sense was a seasoned oil-and-vinegar sauce for cold cooked food, closer to the French sauce ravigote than to a salad dressing. American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries printed such sauces among the standard cold accompaniments for oysters on the half shell, oysters then being cheap enough to be everyday eating in coastal cities. The name comes from French vinaigre, itself vin aigre, sour wine. Tarragon vinegar was a common pantry item in the period, sold bottled by grocers and also made at home by steeping the herb.