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Mayonnaise Dressing
Blend the yolks of 2 raw eggs with 1 teaspoon of mustard, pinch of salt and a dash of paprika. Add slowly a few drops of olive oil, stirring rapidly, then more at a time. When thick, add a little vinegar or lemon juice, then more oil and vinegar until ½ a cup of oil and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and the same of vinegar have been used.
This is a classic hand-beaten emulsion built on uncooked egg yolks, and that is where it runs into trouble: nothing in the method brings the eggs to a safe temperature, and the recipe gives no guidance on acid strength or holding time.
- Raw yolks, no kill stepThe yolks are never heated at any point. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella both on the shell and within the yolk, and a whisked dressing distributes any contamination evenly through the whole batch. A current mayonnaise recipe built on pasteurized eggs or pasteurized yolk product should be used instead.
- Acid added last, and unmeasured in effectThe vinegar and lemon juice go in gradually and only after the emulsion has formed, so the yolks sit unacidified for the whole first stage. The recipe also specifies no vinegar strength, and the acidity of the finished dressing is not controlled in a way that would reliably suppress bacterial growth.
- No storage instructionThe original says nothing about refrigeration or holding time. A dressing of this kind left standing unrefrigerated in a warm room is where the risk is highest.
- Quantities, for reading the textHalf a cup of oil to two yolks is a soft, pourable dressing rather than the stiff commercial style; it yields a little under a cup. The four tablespoons of combined lemon juice and vinegar make it noticeably sharper than a modern jarred mayonnaise.
- Why the oil goes in drop by dropThe lecithin in the yolk can only coat so much oil surface at once. Adding faster than the emulsion can absorb is what causes the mixture to break — a technical point that remains true, though it does not address the safety problem here.
Mayonnaise reached English-language cookbooks from French practice in the nineteenth century, and by the time the Five Roses Cook Book was compiled it was widely used as a dressing for cold meats, fish and the moulded salads then in fashion — which is why it sits here among the catsups, pickles and sauces rather than with the desserts or breads. Its origin is disputed: the name is often traced to Port Mahon on Minorca, taken by the French in 1756, though other accounts derive it from the old French moyeu, meaning egg yolk. Before commercial jarred mayonnaise became widely available in the 1910s and 1920s, a batch was generally made up at home, beaten in a bowl with a fork or a small whisk.