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Morcan's Tartan Sauce
Put into a bowl one spoonful of dry mustard, two spoonfuls salt, a little cayenne pepper, yolk of one raw egg; mix these together. Then add, drop by drop, one teacupful sweet-oil; stir until a thick mass. Add a little vinegar. Chop very fine two small cucumber pickles, two teaspoonfuls capers, two sprigs parsley, one leek or small onion, and a little celery; stir all into the dressing. This is delicious with boiled fish, either hot or cold-also cold meats, chicken or turkey--Mrs. S.
This is a hand-built mayonnaise turned into a tartare sauce. The whole thing hinges on the emulsion, and everything after that is chopping.
- Add the oil truly drop by dropA single yolk will hold a teacupful of oil, but only if the oil goes in slowly at the start. Go drop by drop until the mixture visibly thickens and only then move to a thin stream; if it splits, start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the broken sauce into it a little at a time.
- "Sweet-oil" is olive oilThe nineteenth-century term for edible olive oil, as opposed to lamp or machine oil. Period oil was mild and often rancid-prone; a light or refined olive oil suits better here than a peppery extra-virgin, which will fight the capers.
- A teacupfulPeriod teacups varied, and the equivalent given in nineteenth-century sources ranges from about half a cup to three-quarters. Measure about 3/4 cup of oil to start and stop when the sauce is as thick as you want it.
- "Spoonful" and the saltAn unqualified spoonful in books of this period may mean either a teaspoon or a tablespoon. Two spoonfuls of salt against one yolk is aggressive by modern taste on either reading, and the pickles and capers bring their own; start with half a teaspoon and correct at the end.
- Cucumber picklesSour cucumber pickles, not sweet ones. Cornichons or a firm dill gherkin give the right acidity; drain and squeeze the chopped pickles or the sauce will loosen.
- Leek or onionUse only the white of a small leek, minced very fine, or a shallot. Raw onion chopped coarse will dominate a sauce this small.
- VinegarA teaspoon or so of white wine or cider vinegar, added after the emulsion is set as the recipe directs, thins and brightens it.
- Raw yolkThe yolk is never cooked. For anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use a pasteurized egg or pasteurized yolks, and keep the finished sauce refrigerated and eat it within two or three days.
- YieldSomething over a cup, enough for six to eight servings alongside fish or cold meat.
"Tartan" here is almost certainly a compositor's or contributor's rendering of tartare — sauce tartare, the French cold sauce of mayonnaise sharpened with pickles, capers and herbs, whose name is generally traced to the vague nineteenth-century European use of "à la tartare" for anything served raw, cold or fiercely seasoned. Its appearance in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), a collection Marion Cabell Tyree assembled from named Virginia housekeepers, shows how thoroughly French sauces had entered the repertoire of well-off Southern households by the post-war decades. Note too that the recipe assumes the reader can build a mayonnaise from memory: it gives no warning about splitting and no fallback.