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Cream Mayonnaise Dressing
To Mayonnaise Dressing I or II add one-third cup thick cream, beaten until stiff. This recipe should be used only when dressing is to be eaten the day it is made.
A one-line variation that depends entirely on the mayonnaise it is folded into. The whole point is lightness, and the whole problem is that lightness collapses within hours.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirWhip the cream in a chilled bowl until stiff, as the recipe directs, then fold it into the mayonnaise in two or three additions with a spatula. Beating it in knocks out the air and you end up with thin mayonnaise rather than a cream dressing.
- "Thick cream"In this book that means the richer cream, what would now be sold as heavy or whipping cream rather than the "thin cream" used for pouring. Ultra-pasteurised cream whips but tends to hold its air less well, which shortens the already short life of the dressing.
- One-third cupAbout 5 tablespoons, 80 ml, measured before whipping. Whipped, it roughly doubles in volume, so expect the finished dressing to look far more generous than the mayonnaise you started with.
- Mayonnaise Dressing I or IIFarmer's base dressings are raw egg yolk, mustard, salt, cayenne, oil beaten in drop by drop, and lemon juice or vinegar. Bottled mayonnaise works as a substitute, though it is sweeter and softer than the original and the cream will thin it more.
- Why the same-day ruleWhipped cream weeps as it stands, and the water it releases loosens the oil-and-yolk emulsion. Within a day you have a separated, watery dressing. Refrigerate it, covered, and use it within a few hours for the best texture.
- Raw yolkThe base dressing is never heated. If you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised shell eggs or pasteurised yolks for the mayonnaise.
- Yield and useThe finished quantity is whatever your base mayonnaise makes plus the whipped cream, which is bulkier than the third of a cup suggests. Dressings of this kind were commonly served with fruit, chicken and cold fish, where straight mayonnaise reads as heavy.
Fannie Farmer's book codified for American home cooks a dressing generally traced to French professional kitchens, and the cream variation belongs to a particular late-Victorian and Edwardian taste: the salad course as something pale, cool and delicate, often said to have favoured lettuce cups, celery, apples, grapes and cold poultry rather than sharp greens. Lightening mayonnaise with whipped cream, sometimes called a Chantilly mayonnaise in French usage, softened the pungency of the mustard and cayenne and made it acceptable alongside fruit. The stern closing sentence is the real period detail: iceboxes kept food cool rather than cold, and a cook working without reliable refrigeration knew exactly how quickly an aerated egg-and-cream emulsion goes to pieces.