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Mayonnaise Dressing
Put the uncooked yolks of two eggs into a clean, cold soup-dish, beat them well with a silver or wooden fork about one minute; then add a half teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne, and, if you like it, a half-teaspoonful of mustard. Work these well together, and then add, drop by drop, a half pint or more of olive oil. You must stir rapidly and steadily while adding the oil. Do not reverse the motion, or it may curdle. After adding one gill of oil, alternate occasionally with a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar. The more oil you use, the thicker the dressing. If too thick, add a half-tablespoonful or more of vinegar, until the proper consistency. More or less oil may be added, according to the quantity of dressing wanted. With care a quart bottle of oil may be stirred into the yolks of two eggs, alternating with a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar, after adding the first gill of oil. It is easier, however, to start with three yolks when making a quart of dressing. In case the dressing should curdle, i. e., the egg and oil separate, which makes the dressing liquid, begin anew at once with the yolks of two eggs in another plate, and after stirring them well, add by teaspoonfuls the curdled Mayonnaise, stirring all the while, and then finish by adding more oil as directed.
In warm weather, it will take only one-half the time, if you put the dish in which you make the Mayonnaise on a piece of ice, or in a pan of ice-water; the oil and eggs should also be cold.
This dressing, if covered closely in a jar or tumbler, will keep in a cool place for one week.
This is a classic hand-beaten mayonnaise, and the method of adding oil drop by drop is sound. The problem is not the technique but the eggs and the week-long storage instruction, which belong to a kitchen with a cold larder and a different egg supply.
- Raw yolks, never heatedThe yolks go in uncooked and are never brought to any temperature at all. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella Enteritidis inside the yolk, not merely on the shell, and nothing in this procedure reduces it.
- A week in a "cool place"The closing line tells you to hold the finished dressing for a week somewhere cool. A larder or cellar is warmer than modern refrigeration, and warm enough for surviving bacteria to multiply. Emulsified oil offers no preservative action.
- No measured acidLemon juice or vinegar is added "a few drops" at a time, entirely by feel. Acidification is what keeps a raw-egg sauce in check, and it only works when the finished pH is measured and low enough. Nothing here controls that, so the safety of the batch is unknowable.
- Scaled up enormouslyThe recipe contemplates beating a full quart of oil into two or three yolks. That is roughly a litre of dressing from a couple of raw eggs, all of it intended to be kept and eaten over days. If you want mayonnaise, use a current recipe with pasteurised egg or a commercial product.
- Reading the measuresA gill is a half cup, so "a half pint or more of olive oil" is a cup or more, and the first gill is the point at which the emulsion is considered stable enough to take acid.
- The soup-dish and the silver forkA wide shallow bowl gives the fork room to work the oil into the egg, and silver or wood may have been specified because iron and steel of the period could discolour egg and acid. Modern stainless steel is inert.
- Why the motion must not reverseThe warning against reversing the stirring direction is traditional advice rather than an established mechanism; what matters is steady, continuous stirring while the oil goes in drop by drop. The rescue described, restarting with fresh yolks and dribbling the broken sauce back in, is still the standard fix.
Mayonnaise reached English-language cookbooks in the nineteenth century as a French sauce, and the name's origin is traditional rather than documented: it is often traced to Mahón in Menorca, taken by French forces in 1756, and sometimes instead to the old French moyeu, meaning the yolk of an egg. Made by hand, this was a test of patience and wrist, which is why the instructions dwell so long on the drop-by-drop pace, the ice-water bath in warm weather, and the method for saving a broken batch.