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Quick Mayonnaise Dressing
Salt & pepper to taste. 2 T sugar 1 t flour (heaping) ½ t mustard Salt & pepper to taste ½ C vinegar 1/2 C water 3 eggs, beaten Butter size of walnut Mix all dry ingredients together. Pour vinegar into beaten eggs very slowly. Add the water. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry. Cook in double boiler until it thickens. Do not let boil. Cool and add whipped cream.
Lorna Vanston. 1 t salt 1 t mustard 2 T sugar 2 T butter or oil
This is a cooked salad dressing in the old style, not a true mayonnaise oms and vinegar thickened over water rather than oil beaten into yolks. The typed original has lost some fraction marks, so read the quantities with that in mind.
- The vinegar and mustardThe printed page gives half a teaspoon of mustard and half a cup of vinegar, as our text now reads. A half cup of vinegar against a half cup of water and three eggs is the standard proportion for this kind of dressing.
- The second ingredient listThe trailing lines (1 t salt, 1 t mustard, 2 T sugar, 2 T butter or oil) look like a contributor's alternate seasoning for the same method rather than additions to the first list. Use one set or the other, not both.
- Butter size of walnutRoughly 1 tablespoon, about half an ounce. Shelled walnut, not in the shell.
- Do not let it boilThis is the hinge. Three whole eggs set into a custard somewhere around 170 mF; past that the proteins tighten and the dressing turns grainy and weepy. Keep the water below the bowl at a bare simmer and pull the dressing as soon as it coats the spoon.
- Temper, don't dumpThe instruction to pour vinegar into the beaten eggs "very slowly" is doing real work. Acid added fast will curdle raw egg before it ever sees heat. Whisk constantly while it goes in.
- The flourA heaping teaspoon of flour is insurance against curdling, but it needs the full cooking time to lose its raw taste. Give it a couple of minutes of gentle thickening once the mixture has come together.
- The whipped creamNo quantity is given. About 1/4 to 1/2 cup of cream, whipped to soft peaks and folded in after the base is fully cold, gives the pale dressing associated with these recipes. Adding it warm will deflate it.
- Yield and keepingRoughly 1 1/2 cups, enough for a large bowl of cabbage slaw or potato salad. Keep the dressing refrigerated, and once the cream is folded in use it promptly.
Recipes titled "mayonnaise" in American community cookbooks of the mid-twentieth century very often describe this dish instead: a boiled or cooked dressing of eggs, vinegar, sugar and mustard, thickened with a little flour and softened with cream. It was cheaper than an oil emulsion and more forgiving to make. The attribution to Lorna Vanston is typical of the form: recipes collected under contributors' names, which is the only record many of these cooks left.