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American Favorite Salad Dressing
6 hard-boiled eggs (the yolks only needed). 2 or 3 raw yolks 1/2 cupful of olive oil. 1/2 cupful of melted fresh butter. 1 cupful of vinegar. 2 teaspoonfuls of salt. 1 tablespoonful of made mustard. Little black pepper and cayenne.
Pound the hard-boiled yolks quite smooth in a bowl with the warm butter, add the salt, mustard and pepper, and then beat in the oil gradually, and alternately with the vinegar. The bowl should be set in ice water in warm weather. This makes a buttery compound, that may be reduced either with cold chicken liquor, cream, or vinegar and water, according to the requirement.
A boiled-yolk mayonnaise of the kind common in American hotel kitchens before the First World War. The technique is sound, but the two or three raw yolks are never heated at any stage, and nothing in the method brings them to a safe temperature.
- The raw yolks are the problemTwo or three raw yolks go into a cold emulsion that is served as-is. Salmonella in shell eggs is the specific risk, and a dressing held at room temperature in a warm kitchen is a favourable environment for it. The cupful of vinegar helps but is not a reliable kill step, and the recipe gives no holding time or temperature at all. Use a current dressing recipe instead.
- Melted butter compounds itThe warm butter is used to soften the hard-boiled yolks, which brings the mixture into the range where bacteria multiply before it is set over ice. The instruction to set the bowl in ice water "in warm weather" is most simply read as a measure to keep the butter firm and the emulsion stable, and should not be taken as evidence that the dressing was known to spoil.
- "Made mustard"Not dry mustard powder but prepared mustard, mixed and ready in the pot. Probably a plain, sharp table mustard rather than anything Dijon-style, though the recipe does not say which.
- Cold chicken liquorThe strained, cooled cooking liquid from poached fowl, which will set to a light jelly if it is gelatinous enough. Here it is a thinner that adds savour without further fat. It is a perishable ingredient in its own right and adds nothing to the keeping of the finished dressing.
- Proportions to noteA full cup of vinegar to half a cup of oil and half a cup of butter is far more acid than a modern mayonnaise, which runs heavily toward oil. The result was meant to be sharp and "buttery" rather than rich, and to be let down further before it reached the table.
- Why it sets in the bowlWhy it firms in the bowl -- The butter is likely what stiffens this dressing as it cools, as much as the emulsion itself; the recipe calls the result a "buttery compound."
Cooked-yolk dressings sit between the old English boiled salad dressing and the French mayonnaise, and hybrids using both raw and hard-boiled yolks appear in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The hard yolks were partly insurance: they thicken reliably and forgive a cook who cannot hold an emulsion. The butter, the heavy hand with vinegar and the prepared mustard are homely touches rather than classical ones, and the suggestion of thinning with chicken liquor reflects a kitchen that wasted nothing and expected one base preparation to serve several dishes.