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Chicken Salad Dressing
1/2 cup rich chicken stock 1/2 cup vinegar Yolks 5 eggs 2 tablespoons mixed mustard 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper Few grains cayenne 1/2 cup thick cream 1/2 cup melted butter Reduce stock in which a fowl has been cooked to one-half cupful. Add vinegar, yolks of eggs slightly beaten, mustard, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cook over boiling water, stirring constantly until mixture thickens. Strain, add cream and melted butter, then cool.
Oil Dressing I 4 "hard-boiled" eggs 4 tablespoons oil 4 tablespoons vinegar 1/2 tablespoons sugar 1/2 teaspoon mustard 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne White 1 egg Force yolks of "hard-boiled" eggs through a strainer, then work, using a silver or wooden spoon, until smooth. Add sugar, mustard, salt, and cayenne, and when well blended add gradually oil and vinegar, stirring and beating until thoroughly mixed; then cut and fold in white of egg beaten until stiff.
A cooked yolk dressing built on reduced chicken stock, closer to a hollandaise than to modern mayonnaise. The whole thing hinges on gentle heat: the yolks must thicken without setting into curds.
- Cook it over water, not on the burnerSet the bowl over simmering water and stir without stopping. The mixture thickens between about 170 and 180F; past that the yolks scramble and no amount of straining will recover the texture.
- The stockReducing poaching liquid from a whole fowl down to half a cup concentrates gelatin as well as flavour, and that gelatin may add a little to the body of the cooled dressing, though the butter and yolks do most of that work. Canned broth reduced the same way gives flavour but less gelatin.
- Mixed mustard"Mixed mustard" is mustard powder already made into a paste with water or vinegar, i.e. ordinary prepared mustard. Two tablespoons is assertive against a mild chicken salad, which is the point.
- Thick creamUse heavy cream, 36 percent or above; "thick cream" here means cream rich in fat rather than any particular treatment.
- Vinegar strengthHalf a cup of vinegar to half a cup of stock is sharp by current taste. Cider or white wine vinegar at 5 percent acidity suits it; older household vinegars varied widely, so taste before the butter goes in.
- Strain before enrichingStraining is not optional tidiness. It catches any thread of set yolk and any bits of mustard skin, so the cream and butter fold into something smooth.
- Yield and keepingSomething over two cups by the volumes given, enough to dress a salad made from one large chicken. Because it contains stock and cooked yolks, keep it covered in the refrigerator and use within two days.
- The oil dressing that followsThe second dressing is uncooked and depends on raw beaten egg white for lightness. Anyone avoiding raw egg should leave it out and simply loosen the yolk paste with a little more oil.
Cooked yolk dressings of this kind were widely used for chicken salad into the twentieth century, alongside oil mayonnaise; they made use of the yolks and the stock a cook already had on hand after poaching a fowl, and they called for no cup of salad oil. Chicken salad was a common dish at suppers and luncheons, and the sharpness of mustard and vinegar was doing real work against a large quantity of bland cold poultry. The instruction to stir with a silver or wooden spoon in the companion dressing reflects a period concern that base-metal spoons could discolour an acid or egg mixture.