Salad Dressing
Mayonnaise Dressing No. I SUCCESS in making a mayonnaise dressing generally depends upon all the ingredients being of the same temperature. 2 egg yolks 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cayenne 1 teaspoon mustard 1 tablespoon vinegar 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 cup olive oil teaspoon paprika Mix salt, cayenne, mustard and paprika. Beat yolks well, and add to seasonings; beat until mixture is thick. Add olive oil, drop by drop, for the first four tablespoons, then more rapidly until oil is used, thinning as needed with lemon juice and vinegar.
Mayonnaise Dressing No. 2 yolks of two hard-cooked eggs 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon mustard 1½ cups olive oil 1 teaspoon paprika few grains cayenne 1 tablespoon vinegar 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 raw egg yolk Mash hard-cooked yolks; add raw yolk, salt, mustard, paprika and cayenne. Stir until well blended; add four tablespoons oil, drop by drop, then the remainder by teaspoonfuls, thinning by adding lemon juice and vinegar as the mixture becomes too thick to handle.
Mayonnaise Dressing No. 3 Use same ingredients as Mayonnaise Dressing No. 2, omitting yolk of raw egg, and using one whole egg.
Three versions of the same emulsion, moving from all-raw yolks to a cooked-yolk base that is far harder to break. The fraction marks have been lost from most of the seasoning quantities in this printing, which matters a great deal for the cayenne.
- The lost fractionsA full teaspoon of cayenne in one cup of mayonnaise would be overwhelming, and the paprika is given as "teaspoon paprika" with no number at all, so figures have clearly dropped out of this printing. The original amounts cannot be recovered from the text as it stands: begin with a few grains of cayenne and about half a teaspoon of paprika, and taste before adding more.
- Same temperature, as the book saysThis is the hinge and the book leads with it. Oil much colder than the yolks is a common cause of a broken emulsion; take eggs, oil, vinegar and lemon juice out ahead of time so that everything sits at the same room temperature.
- Drop by drop means drop by dropThe first four tablespoons of oil decide whether the sauce forms. Add them a few drops at a time with constant beating, and only speed up once the mixture has visibly thickened and turned pale.
- Mustard"Mustard" here is dry English mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. It is doing emulsifying work as well as seasoning.
- Raw yolksRaw eggs -- None of the three is heated: No. 1 uses raw yolks, No. 2 adds a raw yolk to the cooked ones, and No. 3 uses a whole raw egg. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or pasteurized yolks; the sauce behaves identically. Keep it refrigerated and use within three or four days.
- Why No. 2 and No. 3 existMashed hard-cooked yolks give a more forgiving base, thickening the mixture mechanically so that a partial break is less obvious. The book does not say why the variants are offered.
- MachinesA food processor or immersion blender will emulsify all three, though the whisked version has a lighter texture. With a stick blender, put everything in a narrow jar, oil on top, and run the blade at the bottom until the base emulsifies before lifting it.
- YieldNo. 1 makes roughly a cup and a quarter; No. 2 and No. 3 about a cup and three-quarters. That is a large batch by modern standards, sized for a household serving cold meats and composed salads.
- If it breaksBeat a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and add the broken mixture back into it drop by drop. Nothing is lost but time.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer that, like Baker's and Rumford, used a full general cookbook as advertising for a single product line. That is why a chapter of salad dressings sits in a book best known for its chocolate work: the volume had to serve as a household's only cookbook to earn its shelf space. The three graded mayonnaises reflect a moment when olive-oil dressings were still slightly grand in American kitchens and commercial jarred mayonnaise had not yet taken over; a cook was expected to build the emulsion by hand with a fork or wire whisk, and the hard-cooked-yolk variants are frank insurance against failure. The name is generally traced to Mahón, the port of Menorca taken by the French in 1756, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented, and rival claims point simply to the old French moyeu, meaning egg yolk.