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Variations in the Making of Mayonnaise Dressing
Mayonnaise dressing takes on a new flavor if chopped pickles, olives, mangoes, pimiento or celery are added.
Mayonnaise may be extended by adding a corn-starch paste to it. This paste may be made on the proportion of two tablespoons of corn-starch to one cup of water. It must be smooth, transparent and well-cooked, so that the corn-starch taste is destroyed. If this paste is used, the mayonnaise needs to be seasoned more highly.
A short note on stretching and flavoring a finished mayonnaise, from an era when hand-beaten mayonnaise was expensive in both oil and labor.
- "Mangoes" are not the tropical fruitIn American cookbooks of this period a "mango" is a mangoed vegetable — a small musk melon or a sweet green pepper, hollowed, stuffed and pickled. Use a chopped sweet pickled pepper or any sharp mixed pickle.
- The cornstarch pasteTwo tablespoons cornstarch to one cup water gives a stiff, clear gel. Cook it in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring, until it turns from milky to translucent, then let it bubble gently a minute or two longer; raw starch has a chalky, pasty flavor that no amount of seasoning will hide.
- Cool before combiningThe recipe does not say so, but it is safer to let the paste cool before beating it into the mayonnaise, adding it a spoonful at a time; warm starch can thin the dressing and may cause it to separate.
- Season harder, as instructedThis is the hinge of the note. The starch is flavorless bulk and dilutes everything, so lift the salt, mustard, and especially the vinegar or lemon juice; taste after the paste is fully incorporated, not before.
- Chopped additions need drainingPickles, olives, and pimiento carry brine. Blot or press them dry, or the added liquid may thin the dressing and make it weep.
- KeepingA starch-extended mayonnaise is unlikely to hold as well as plain mayonnaise, since starch gels tend to weep as they stand. Best made in the quantity needed for one meal, and refrigerated.
- Raw eggHomemade mayonnaise of this era is uncooked. If it will be served to children, the elderly, or anyone pregnant, use pasteurized eggs.
Extending mayonnaise with cooked starch was a thrift measure, and the reasoning shows how costly the dressing once was: a cup of mayonnaise takes the better part of a cup of salad oil, beaten in slowly by hand or with a rotary beater. Cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s carry many such stretchers — boiled dressings thickened with flour and egg, "mock" mayonnaises bound with condensed or evaporated milk, and starch pastes like this one — and fats and oils were among the things households were asked to economise on during the First World War food conservation campaigns. The instruction that the paste be "smooth, transparent and well-cooked" reflects a real fault of the method: undercooked cornstarch tastes distinctly of raw starch.