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American Salad Dressing
Yolks of three hard-boiled eggs, 1 tablespoonful of vinegar, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, Yolk of one raw egg, 1 gill of olive oil, Dash of cayenne, ¼ teaspoonful of mustard.
Before beginning to mix this dressing I would like to say one word about the mustard. I have told you that
A boiled-yolk dressing of the kind that sat between a plain French dressing and a true mayonnaise: the cooked yolks give body and forgiveness, the raw yolk does the emulsifying. The quantities are workable as given once the old measures are translated.
- A gill of oilA gill is half a cup, 4 fluid ounces. That is a generous amount of oil against a single raw yolk, so it must go in slowly or the sauce will break.
- The mustardRecipes of this period usually mean dry mustard powder rather than the prepared jarred kind, though the author's own remarks on the point are cut off here. The quantity is a fraction of a teaspoonful; if you use prepared mustard, cut the vinegar slightly, since it is already acidulated.
- Work the cooked yolks firstThe recipe's own method is cut off, so this order is a suggestion: press the three hard-boiled yolks through a sieve and mash them smooth with the salt, mustard and cayenne before anything wet goes in. Lumps at this stage are hard to disperse later.
- Then the raw yolk, then the oilBeat the raw yolk into the paste, add the oil drop by drop until the mixture thickens and takes a gloss, and only then let it run in a thin stream. The vinegar goes in at the end, or in two additions if the sauce grows too stiff to beat.
- If it separatesStart a fresh raw yolk in a clean bowl and beat the broken dressing into it a spoonful at a time. Sieved cooked yolk alone will not rescue a split emulsion.
- Raw yolkThe dressing is never heated. Use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, and keep the finished dressing refrigerated.
- Yield and keepingAbout three-quarters of a cup, enough for a salad for four to six. It thickens in the cold; make it the day you serve it.
Cooked-yolk dressings were the American compromise between the oil-and-vinegar dressing of the French table and the labor of a true hand-beaten mayonnaise. The sieved hard-boiled yolks add fat and starchless body, which was said to make the sauce less likely to break in an unrefrigerated kitchen, and versions of it turn up under names like "boiled dressing," "cream salad dressing" and, as here, simply "American." Cayenne and dry mustard were the standard warming pair in such recipes, mustard valued as much for its emulsifying power as for its bite. That the author pauses to lecture on mustard before mixing is characteristic of turn-of-the-century cookery instruction, which was written as much to teach principles as to record proportions.