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Mayonnaise Sauce
1/2 pint (I cup) olive oil 1 egg yolk 1 tablespoonful vinegar 1 tablespoonful lemon juice 1/2 teaspoonful powdered sugar 1/4 teaspoonful salt Dash of red pepper 1/4 teaspoonful mustard Mix together in an earthenware bowl the salt, red pepper, mustard, and yolk of egg. Beat with a wooden spoon until slightly thickened. Add the sugar and a teaspoonful of lemon juice or vinegar, and when well blended with the other ingredients add the olive oil gradually, beating constantly.
When several teaspoonfuls of the oil have been added, a small egg-beater may be substituted for the wooden spoon, and the oil may be added faster.
When the mixture becomes too thick to beat easily, add a little of the lemon juice or vinegar, then more oil, and so on, alternating until all the ingredients are used. If liked, add more seasonings.
A standard hand-beaten mayonnaise of the period, and the method still works exactly as written. The variables that decide success are temperature and the rate at which the oil goes in.
- The hinge: add the oil slowly at the startThe first spoonfuls must go in all but drop by drop, with constant beating, or the emulsion may not form. The recipe itself allows a faster pace once several teaspoonfuls have been worked in and the mixture has thickened and paled.
- Everything at one temperatureCold oil meeting a cold yolk is a common cause of failure. Let the egg, the oil, the bowl and the acid stand at room temperature for half an hour before starting.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is one US cup of oil, as the recipe says. The whole thing yields roughly one and a quarter cups of finished sauce, enough for a large bowl of chicken or potato salad.
- "Red pepper" and "mustard"Red pepper here is cayenne, not paprika or chilli flakes. The mustard is dry mustard powder, which also helps stabilise the emulsion; prepared mustard will work but thins the sauce and shifts the flavour.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term generally meant a finer-ground granulated sugar rather than today's cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar. Superfine sugar is the closer match, and half a teaspoon of granulated dissolves well enough in the acid.
- Why earthenware and a wooden spoonBoth are non-reactive. Glass, ceramic or stainless steel are fine; bare aluminium or unlined copper will discolour the sauce and give it a metallic edge.
- Oil choiceA full cup of assertive extra-virgin olive oil makes a bitter, heavy mayonnaise by modern palates, and high-speed beating accentuates that bitterness. A mild olive oil, or half olive and half neutral oil, gives a result closer to what the book intends.
- If it breaksStart a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the split mixture into it a spoonful at a time. A teaspoon of warm water beaten in can also bring back a sauce that has only begun to separate.
- Raw egg and keepingThe yolk is never cooked. Use a pasteurized egg if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, keep the sauce refrigerated, and use it within three or four days.
Mayonnaise reached American cookbooks through French practice, where it had been established as a cold emulsified sauce since the early nineteenth century; the name is traditionally traced to Mahón in Menorca, though that derivation has never been settled and rival explanations point to the French manier, to handle, or to the town of Bayonne. What is certain is that by the time this book was written the sauce was a fixture of the American table, bound up with the cold salads and chilled dressed dishes that a well-run household served alongside hot cookery. Its appearance here is a reminder that these volumes were rarely single-subject: a chapter of sauces was expected furniture, whatever else the book contained. The insistence on a wooden spoon and a small egg-beater places the recipe loosely, somewhere in the decades after the rotary beater had reached ordinary kitchens but before any electric appliance could be assumed.