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Hollandaise Salad Cream
1/2 pint of good white wine vinegar. 1/2 pint scant of water. 8 ounces of butter. 12 yolks of eggs. 1 tablespoonful made mustard. A pinch of cayenne.
The book gives quantities only, with no method — this was a professional formula for a cook who already knew how such a dressing was built. Read it as a cooked egg-yolk sauce in the boiled-dressing family rather than as classical hollandaise.
- The measuresOn US measure a half pint is 1 cup, giving 1 cup vinegar and a scant cup water; on imperial measure a half pint is 10 fl oz, so scale accordingly. "Scant" means just under, filled short of the rim. Twelve yolks come to roughly 6 fl oz.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard is prepared mustard already mixed with liquid, not dry mustard powder. Use a plain sharp Dijon or English prepared mustard; a tablespoon of dry powder would be far more assertive.
- The vinegarVinegar strength varied from maker to maker in this period and may not match a modern standardised 5-6 percent product. Diluting the vinegar with the scant measure of water already tempers it, but taste before committing the yolks -- a modern sharp vinegar may want a little more water.
- The method the book omitsWhisk yolks, mustard, cayenne and the diluted vinegar together in a double boiler or a bowl over barely simmering water, then work in the butter in pieces as the mixture thickens. Direct heat will scramble a mixture this yolk-heavy in seconds.
- Temperature is the hingeHold the sauce between about 160F and 175F. Below that the yolks are neither safe nor thickened; much above 180F and the emulsion curdles, and no amount of whisking brings it back.
- If it splitsStrain it while still warm, then whisk it in a thin stream into a fresh yolk over the water bath. The vinegar makes the mixture more forgiving than butter-only hollandaise but not immune.
- Yield and useAbout a quart, a catering quantity; quarter it for home use. The title points to a salad dressing rather than a hot sauce, so it was presumably served cool, though the book specifies neither use nor keeping time.
The name is borrowed rather than literal: cookbooks of the period often used "hollandaise" loosely for almost any warm sauce thickened with egg yolks and butter and sharpened with acid. What this formula actually resembles is a boiled salad dressing — the vinegar-and-yolk cream that American households and hotel kitchens made in quantity because it held for days without the temperament of a raw-yolk mayonnaise. Vinegar at this proportion is doing double duty, flavoring the sauce and keeping it. That a pastry cook's manual carries it is not as odd as it looks, since such books are not always confined to cake formulas.