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Economical Sauce for Cold Meat and Fish
4 tablespoons salad oil 4 tablespoons cream 3 tablespoons vinegar Mustard Salt Pepper Mix the salad oil, cream, vinegar, a little mustard, salt and pepper. Beat together quickly, with an egg-beater. The sauce gets white quickly and looks like whipped cream. Soon it becomes as thick as the best-made mayonnaise. Moreover, eggs are not required, the sauce will not curdle, and can be made quickly.
A three-ingredient eggless dressing that thickens by acid setting the cream rather than by a true emulsion. It works, but it behaves differently from mayonnaise once it sits.
- The hinge: beat fast, use cold creamCold cream whips and thickens better, and the vinegar helps set it as air is beaten in. The recipe has you mix everything and then beat quickly; if you prefer, adding the vinegar gradually while beating gives a smoother result.
- Salad oilIn this period the term meant a bland vegetable or olive oil sold for dressings. Any neutral oil works; a strong extra-virgin olive oil will dominate the small quantity of cream.
- CreamUse heavy or whipping cream, 35 percent or above. Half-and-half or single cream has too little fat to hold air and will stay thin and watery.
- Vinegar strengthVinegars varied in strength and the sharpness here is a matter of taste. Start with two tablespoons, taste, and add the third only if it needs the sharpness.
- Mustard is doing real work"A little mustard" means about half a teaspoon of prepared mustard or a scant quarter teaspoon of dry powder. Mustard contributes some emulsifying power, working with the cream to hold the oil in the absence of egg yolk.
- It is less stable than mayonnaiseDespite the claim that it will not curdle, it can separate on standing. Make it just before serving, or re-beat briefly before it goes to the table.
- Yield and useAbout three-quarters of a cup, enough to dress cold sliced beef, tongue or poached fish for four. Refrigerate any leftover and treat it as you would any fresh dairy dressing: use within two days.
Eggless dressings like this one belong to a long run of "economical" substitutions in home cookery writing, when eggs were a saleable commodity for many households and a broken mayonnaise meant wasted yolks and wasted oil. The Delineator was Butterick's women's magazine, better known for its dress patterns. Sauces of this type were commonly grouped with mayonnaise and its relatives, which were understood as French cookery, whatever was actually in the bowl.