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Mayonnaise II
1 egg juice of 1 lemon or 4 tablespoons vinegar 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups olive oil Put egg with vinegar or lemon juice and seasoning into bowl, beating with rotary egg beater. Add oil a tablespoonful or more at a time, beating constantly. Well covered, this mayonnaise will keep for three or four weeks without separating.
The method here is sound emulsion technique, but the keeping claim at the end is the problem, and it is not a small one.
- The three-to-four-week claimThis is uncooked egg suspended in oil with no refrigeration specified and no measured acidity. A shell egg carrying Salmonella is not neutralised by lemon juice or vinegar in this proportion, and weeks of storage at larder temperature gives any contamination ample time to multiply. Nothing in the recipe brings the egg to a temperature that would kill it.
- Acid is too dilute to protect itAcid is not measured for safety here -- Commercial mayonnaise is held safe by a controlled, tested pH. This recipe gives a choice between one lemon's juice or four tablespoons of vinegar, with no way to know the resulting acidity, so the acid cannot be relied on as a preservative even though the recipe promises weeks of keeping.
- Whole egg, not yolkThe recipe uses the whole egg, white as well as yolk, so the white contributes water and bulk to the finished sauce. Recipes built on yolks alone give a denser result and may not behave the same way at this proportion of oil.
- "Rotary egg beater"A hand-cranked twin-blade beater, the standard tool of the period. It produces a coarser, softer emulsion than a modern blender or immersion blender, which shear the oil into much finer droplets.
- Olive oil of the periodOlive oil -- Table olive oil of the period was not necessarily comparable to a modern extra-virgin, which will taste more assertive than the recipe seems to intend and can turn bitter under high-speed beating.
- If you want mayonnaiseUse a current recipe that specifies pasteurised egg, refrigeration, and a keeping time measured in days.
Mayonnaise reached American cookbooks through French professional cookery in the nineteenth century, and by the time this book appeared it was a standard dressing for composed salads. The recipe's confidence about keeping reflects the pre-refrigeration household: cooks were used to fats and preserves that sat in a cool cellar or larder for weeks, and an emulsion held together by oil was mentally filed alongside them. The great change since is not technique, which is unaltered, but the understanding of egg-borne Salmonella, which was not part of domestic food advice when this was written.