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White Mayonnaise
To make white Mayonnaise follow the ordinary directions, using lemon juice instead of vinegar, omitting the paprika and adding, when finished, a half cup of whipped cream or half an egg white beaten very stiff.
COOKED DRESSING (MOCK MAYONNAISE) 1 cup milk 1 tablespoon butter 2 teaspoons mustard 2 teaspoons sugar 2 teaspoons flour 1 egg 1 tablespoon vinegar 1/2 teaspoon salt Heat the milk and butter; add the egg into which the mustard and sugar and flour have been well beaten. Stir over the fire until the mixture thickens; add the vinegar; take from the fire and add the salt. This may be used in place of Mayonnaise dressing by those who do not care for oil.
Two dressings on one page: a variation on the book's basic mayonnaise, and a flour-thickened cooked dressing for cooks who dislike oil. Neither is difficult, but both hinge on temperature and on when things go in.
- The white mayonnaise depends on a recipe not printed here"follow the ordinary directions" refers to the book's standard mayonnaise, which from the omissions named here evidently contained paprika and vinegar. Use any modern hand- or blender-made mayonnaise as the base and make the substitutions listed.
- Lemon for vinegar, and paprika outBoth changes lighten the dressing: vinegar and paprika tint it yellow-pink, while lemon juice and a white base keep it pale for chicken, fish and fruit salads. Lemon juice will also taste milder than the vinegar it replaces.
- Fold the cream in at the last minuteWhipped cream or beaten egg white lightens the sauce but also loosens it. Fold in shortly before serving; the cream version is likely to separate on standing.
- Raw egg whiteThe half egg white is not cooked at any point. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized shell eggs or carton whites.
- "Mustard" means dry mustard"Mustard" most likely means dry mustard -- in a book of this period an unqualified teaspoon of mustard in a dressing is usually the powdered kind rather than prepared jarred mustard. Prepared mustard would make the cooked dressing both wetter and sharper.
- "Stir over the fire" — keep it low"Stir over the fire" -- keep it gentle. Hold it over medium-low heat, or in a double boiler, stirring until it thickens as the recipe directs. Hard boiling risks a grainy result.
- Vinegar goes in after thickening, for a reasonAdding acid to hot milk before the starch and egg have set will curdle it. Follow the order given: thicken, then vinegar, then off the heat, then salt.
- Yield and keepingThe cooked dressing makes a little over a cup. It thickens considerably as it cools; thin with a spoonful of milk or cream before using. Keep it refrigerated.
Cooked or "boiled" dressing of this kind was in American home use well before mayonnaise became a household staple, and for practical reasons: it needs only a cup of milk, an egg and a spoonful of flour, where mayonnaise needs a cup or more of salad oil, which was comparatively expensive and, in inland kitchens, often stale or rancid by the time it was bought. The frank explanation on the page — "by those who do not care for oil" — points to an American dislike of olive and salad oils in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a taste that commercial bottled mayonnaise is often said to have overturned. The white mayonnaise beside it belongs to a different tradition, that of the pale coating dressings, where a pinkish tinge from paprika would spoil the look of a molded chicken or fish salad.