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French Dressing
Put 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper or few grains cayenne pepper into bowl; add 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil, beating constantly. Place on ice until ready to serve. Mayonnaise I 1 egg yolk 1/2 teaspoon mustard (dry) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/16 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 cup olive oil 2 tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice Utensils and ingredients should be very cold. Put yolk of egg into soup plate or shallow bowl; add mustard, salt and pepper, mix well; add oil slowly, almost drop by drop, beating continually until very thick. Thin with vinegar; continue adding oil and vinegar until all is used.
Two dressings run together in one entry: a simple vinaigrette, which is entirely sound, and an uncooked mayonnaise built on a raw yolk, which is where the trouble lies.
- Why the cautionThe mayonnaise is a raw egg yolk that is never heated and, at 2 tablespoons of acid to a full cup of oil, never brought to a pH low enough to reliably suppress Salmonella. The book also gives no holding instruction beyond "very cold." Use a current mayonnaise recipe if you want to make it.
- The vinaigrette is fineThe first paragraph — lemon or vinegar, salt, pepper, oil beaten in — carries no hazard at all. It is only the mayonnaise that follows that should be left on the page.
- The ratioOne tablespoon acid to two or three of oil is a sharper vinaigrette than the 3:1 or 4:1 commonly cited today. Taste before you commit; the salt is doing a lot of work at half a teaspoon in so small a volume.
- "Place on ice"An icebox instruction, not a flourish. Cold thickens olive oil slightly and helps the temporary emulsion hold; the refrigerator does the same, though good olive oil will cloud and solidify there and needs a few minutes out before serving.
- Cayenne by the 1/16 teaspoonIn practice this means a scant pinch — the intent is warmth on the finish, not detectable heat.
- Mustard (dry)Powdered dry mustard, which acts as an emulsifier as much as a seasoning. Prepared mustard is not a substitute here; it brings its own acid and water.
- Soup plateA wide shallow bowl. The broad surface lets a whisk or fork shear the oil into fine droplets.
- YieldThe vinaigrette makes about 1/4 cup, enough for a salad for four. The mayonnaise as written would make roughly 1 1/4 cups.
"French dressing" in American cookbooks of this era meant what a French cook would call a vinaigrette: oil, acid, salt, pepper, and nothing else. The sweet, orange, tomato-tinged bottled dressing that later took over the name in the United States is a different thing entirely, and largely belongs to a later period. The pairing with mayonnaise on the same page follows a common teaching order — the temporary emulsion first, the permanent one second. The name mayonnaise is generally traced to Mahón, the Minorcan port taken by French forces in 1756, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented, and rival explanations tie it to the French manier, to handle or work. The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company as promotional literature.