Dishes
INGREDIENTS for salad for 6 persons. The yolks of 2 eggs, 6 tablespoonfuls of salad oil, 3 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, salt and white pepper to taste, 1 tablespoonful of white stock, 2 tablespoonfuls of cream. AVERAGE COST, 7d.
Put the yolks of the eggs into a basin, with a seasoning of pepper and salt and pound them smoothly; have ready the above quantities of oil and vinegar, add them very gradually to the eggs, the oil first; continue stirring and rubbing the mixture with a wooden spoon, as herein consists the secret of having a nice smooth sauce. It cannot be stirred too frequently and it should be made in a very cool place, or if ice is at hand, it should be mixed over it. When the vinegar and oil are well incorporated with the eggs, add the stock and cream, stirring all the time and it will then be ready for use.
For a fish Mayonnaise, this sauce may be coloured with lobster-spawn, pounded; and for poultry or meat, where variety is desired, a little parsley-juice may be used to add to its appearance. Cucumber, tarragon, or any other flavoured vinegar, may be substituted for plain, where they are liked.
This is Mrs Beeton's mayonnaise, thinned at the end with stock and cream in the Victorian manner. It behaves like any emulsion sauce: the oil goes in slowly or not at all.
- The hinge: oil by drops"Very gradually" is the whole recipe. Add the oil a few drops at a time until the mixture visibly thickens, then in a thin stream. Six tablespoons of oil to two yolks is a modest ratio, so the emulsion is forgiving, but dumping the oil in will still split it.
- Raw or hard-boiled yolks"Pound them smoothly" reads like cooked yolks, and some Victorian salad dressings did use sieved hard-boiled yolks. The recipe does not say which; the method here — pounding the yolks with seasoning and then working the oil in gradually — is that of a raw-yolk emulsion, and pounding means simply working them smooth before the oil goes in.
- Uncooked eggsThe sauce is never heated. If it is going to sit out on a buffet, or be eaten by anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs and keep the finished sauce refrigerated.
- Keep it coldThe instruction to work in a cool place or over ice is not decoration. A cool bowl and cool ingredients help the emulsion hold; adding the oil too fast is the commonest reason homemade mayonnaise breaks, with warmth a contributing factor.
- Salad oilIn Victorian usage this generally meant olive oil. A modern extra-virgin oil can turn bitter under vigorous beating, so use a light olive oil or half olive, half neutral oil.
- White stockA pale veal or chicken stock. One tablespoon is there to loosen the sauce; if you have none, water or a little more cream does the same job.
- Lobster-spawnThe dark green roe of a hen lobster, which turns coral red on cooking. It is pounded and sieved in to colour a fish mayonnaise pink. Bought lobster is now almost always cooked, so use the red coral from the head, or a pinch of paprika for colour alone.
- Parsley-juiceParsley pounded and squeezed through muslin, used purely to tint the sauce green. Blitzing parsley with a spoonful of the oil and straining gives the same result faster.
- Yield and keepingAbout three-quarters of a cup, stated as enough for six. Because it contains cream and stock it is more perishable than plain mayonnaise: refrigerate and use within a day or two.
The name is usually traced to Mahón, the port on Menorca taken by French forces under the Duc de Richelieu in 1756, the sauce supposedly brought home as mahonnaise; an older and equally traditional explanation derives it from moyeu, the medieval French word for an egg yolk. Neither is documented, and the sauce appears in French cookery writing only in the early nineteenth century. By Mrs Beeton's day it had crossed the Channel firmly enough that "a Mayonnaise" meant not just the sauce but the whole cold dish it masked — salmon, chicken, or a moulded salad. She gives variations for fish, poultry and meat rather than a single all-purpose recipe. The average cost of 7d. is a reminder that olive oil was an imported and not entirely cheap ingredient in an English kitchen.