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Green Mayonnaise
Color Mayonnaise Dressing 1 with juices expressed from parsley and watercress, using one-half as much parsley as watercress. To obtain coloring, break greens in pieces, pound in a mortar until thoroughly macerated, then squeeze through cheese-cloth. Lobster coral, rubbed through a fine sieve, added to Mayonnaise, makes Red Mayonnaise.
This is a variation, not a standalone recipe: it assumes you have already made the book's Mayonnaise Dressing 1, the standard yolk-and-oil emulsion. What follows is really a lesson in extracting plant color without watering down a sauce.
- The hinge: juice, not pulpChopped herbs stirred into mayonnaise give you flecks and a muddy olive tone. Pounding and straining gives a clear, intense green that tints the emulsion evenly. Squeeze the cheesecloth hard and discard the fibrous pulp entirely.
- Blanch first for lasting colorBlanching may help the color last — raw watercress and parsley juice tends to dull as its enzymes work. Dipping the leaves briefly in boiling water and shocking them in ice water before pounding is the usual modern remedy for this, though the recipe as written does not call for it.
- How much greeneryThe original gives no quantity. Reckon on a generous bunch of watercress and half a bunch of parsley, stems removed, to yield the tablespoon or two of juice that will color a cup of mayonnaise. A food processor followed by a cheesecloth squeeze does the mortar's work.
- Watch the consistencyAny thin liquid stirred into a finished mayonnaise loosens it and can break it if added too fast. Beat the juice in a few drops at a time, as you would the oil.
- Lobster coralCoral is the roe of a female lobster. It is dark greenish-black when raw and turns the familiar scarlet only with heat, so use coral from a cooked lobster or the sauce will be grey rather than red. Press it through a fine sieve so no grains remain.
- Raw yolksThe parent recipe is an uncooked emulsion. If it is going to be served to anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or pasteurized yolks.
- What to do with itGreen mayonnaise is a coating and a garnish rather than a salad dressing in bulk. A cup is ample for a cold poached salmon, a platter of hard-boiled eggs, or a chicken salad for six.
Green mayonnaise is the American cooking-school descendant of French sauce verte, in which the juice of pounded herbs — usually some combination of parsley, chervil, tarragon, watercress and spinach — was worked into a cold emulsion to mask poached salmon, trout or cold fowl. The book is generally attributed to Fannie Farmer and traced to the 1890s, though neither is stated on this page; colored mayonnaises were a cheap way to make a cold buffet look composed. The mortar assumed here was standard equipment in a well-kept kitchen of the period, used for pounding almonds, herbs and potted meats long before blenders existed. The lobster coral note reflects a general period thrift with the whole animal — the same coral was pounded with butter to make lobster butter for sauces and canapés.