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Pompeian Mayonnaise
Mix a teaspoonful dry mustard, one half teaspoonful salt, one teaspoonful sugar and a pinch of red pepper with a teaspoonful of lemon juice or vinegar; add to this the yolk of an egg and beat well; then add a cup of Pompeian Olive Oil (a few drops at a time) until a The freshness of a home-made mayonnaise is never equalled in a factory-made mayonnaise. third is stirred in, then it may be put in a little faster. Egg and olive oil must be ice-cold.
The quantity of mayonnaise made by the above recipe may be increased and the color decreased by the addition just before serving of one half cupful of very stiff whipped cream or the white of one egg whipped very stiff.
If mayonnaise is intended for a fruit salad, omit the mustard.
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This is the standard hand-beaten mayonnaise of the early twentieth century, built on a raw egg yolk that is never heated at any point. That is the problem with it.
- Raw yolk, no kill stepThe emulsion is held together by an uncooked egg yolk and served cold. Nothing in the method brings the egg to a temperature that would destroy Salmonella Enteritidis, which can be present inside an intact, clean shell egg rather than only on the outside. Shell eggs of this period came from a very different supply chain, and the organism was not recognised as an internal contaminant of eggs until much later.
- The acid is not a safeguardA single teaspoonful of lemon juice or vinegar in a batch containing a cup of oil leaves the finished sauce well above the pH at which acid meaningfully suppresses bacterial growth. Commercial mayonnaise is acidified far more aggressively than this, which is part of why it keeps.
- Held cold, then served coldThe recipe insists that egg and oil be ice-cold and gives no storage guidance. Chilling slows growth but does not reverse it, and a bowl of dressing that sits out on a buffet through a summer lunch is a textbook vehicle. Anyone who is pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised is at particular risk.
- The optional whipped creamFolding in half a cupful of whipped cream at the end adds a second uncooked dairy component to a sauce that already has no heat step, at a time when pasteurization of cream was not yet universal. Modern cream is pasteurized, but it does nothing to make the yolk safe.
- If you want mayonnaiseUse a current recipe written for pasteurized eggs or pasteurized liquid yolk, or buy it. The technique below is worth reading as a document rather than following.
- Reading the ingredient list"Red pepper" here means ground cayenne, not paprika or a fresh pepper. "Dry mustard" is plain powdered mustard of the Colman's type, with no vinegar or turmeric in it.
- YieldA cup of oil plus one yolk produces roughly a cup and a bit of finished sauce, and more once whipped cream or beaten white is folded in. The line about factory mayonnaise is advertising copy that has drifted into the middle of the instructions.
Booklets like this one were published by olive oil importers rather than by cookery writers, and their purpose was to persuade American households that olive oil belonged in the kitchen at all. Pompeian was one of the best-known such brands in the early twentieth century, and its pamphlets pushed salad and mayonnaise recipes precisely because mayonnaise consumes oil by the cupful. The advice to work the oil in a few drops at a time is sound emulsion practice; the further instruction to keep egg and oil ice-cold is more a period preference than settled technique, and modern sources commonly recommend room-temperature ingredients instead. The instruction to omit the mustard for a fruit salad reflects a period fashion for sweet mayonnaise-and-whipped-cream dressings over tinned pineapple and pears, a style often said to have been a fixture of American salad courses from the 1900s into the 1950s before quietly disappearing.