Salad Sauce
Rub with a fork the yolks of two eggs, boiled hard, and cold, with fresh mustard and a little sauce; four tablespoonfuls of oil to one and a half of vinegar, mixing into a cream. Chop fine chervil, tarragon, and use with lettuce. The sauce should be kept separate until needed.
A creamy dressing built on mashed hard-cooked egg yolks rather than raw — an older, sturdier ancestor of the bottled kind.
- Cooked yolks, not rawThe base is two hard-boiled yolks mashed smooth with mustard — gentler than a raw-yolk mayonnaise and more stable.
- The oil-to-vinegar ratioFour parts oil to one and a half vinegar (about 2⅔:1) — sharper than a standard 3:1 vinaigrette; adjust to taste.
- “A little sauce”Vague in the original; read it as a dash of a table sauce like Worcestershire for savory depth.
- Fresh herbs make itChervil and tarragon give the French fines herbes lift; if chervil is scarce, use parsley with the tarragon.
- Dress at the last minuteThe recipe wisely says keep the sauce separate until needed — toss it in just before serving so the lettuce stays crisp.
Long before jars of mayonnaise, cooks emulsified salad dressings with hard-cooked egg yolks, mashed to a paste with mustard and let down with oil and vinegar — a method both safer and more foolproof than whisking raw yolks. The perfume of chervil and tarragon marks the recipe’s French roots: with parsley and chives they form the classic fines herbes of French cookery. And the closing instruction — keep the sauce apart until the last moment — is the oldest rule of a good green salad.
From page 75 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
