Home › Potatoes › Oil Dressing II
Oil Dressing II
1½ teaspoons mustard 2 tablespoons oil 1 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup vinegar diluted with 2 teaspoons powdered sugar cold water to make one- Few grains cayenne half cup 2 eggs, slightly beaten Mix dry ingredients, add egg and oil gradually, stirring constantly until thoroughly mixed; then add diluted vinegar. Cook over boiling water until mixture thickens; strain and cool.
Mayonnaise Dressing I Yolks 2 eggs 1 teaspoon mustard 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon powdered sugar Few grains cayenne 2 tablespoons lemon juice 2 tablespoons vinegar 1½ cups olive oil Mix dry ingredients, add egg yolks, and when well mixed add one-half teaspoon of vinegar. Add oil gradually, at first drop by drop, and stir constantly. As mixture thickens, thin with vinegar or lemon juice. Add oil, and vinegar or lemon juice alternately, until all is used, stirring or beating constantly. If oil is added too rapidly, dressing will have a curdled appearance. A smooth consistency may be restored by taking yolk of another egg and adding curdled mixture slowly to it. It is desirable to have bowl containing mixture placed in a larger bowl of crushed ice, to which a small quantity of water has been added. Olive oil for making Mayonnaise should always be thoroughly chilled. A silver fork, wire whisk, small wooden spoon, or egg-beater may be used as preferred. Mayonnaise should be stiff enough to hold its shape. It soon liquefies when added to meat or vegetables; therefore it should be added just before serving time.
Two dressings run together here: a cooked "oil dressing" thickened with whole eggs over water, and a classic hand-beaten mayonnaise. The ingredient lists were set in two columns and have been scrambled by transcription, so read them carefully before starting.
- Untangling the first listThe first dressing is 1½ teaspoons mustard, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons powdered sugar, a few grains cayenne, 2 eggs slightly beaten, 2 tablespoons oil, and 1/3 cup vinegar diluted with cold water to make one-half cup. The columns interleaved in the original printing.
- "Over boiling water"That means a double boiler, not direct heat. Whole eggs with only two tablespoons of oil will scramble on a bare pan bottom; keep the water at a bare simmer and stir until the mixture coats a spoon, then strain at once to catch any set threads.
- Powdered sugarIn cookbooks of this period this generally meant finely ground granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Superfine or ordinary granulated is the closer match, and it dissolves fine in either dressing.
- Raw yolks in the mayonnaiseThe second dressing is never heated. If it is going to children, pregnant women, the elderly or anyone immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or pasteurized yolks, which whip and emulsify normally.
- Oil quantity and ratioOne and a half cups of oil to two yolks is a stiff, classic proportion and will give roughly 1¾ cups of mayonnaise. Two yolks will carry that much oil, but only if it goes in drop by drop until the emulsion sets, after which you can thin the stream.
- Chilled oil, chilled bowlThe instruction to chill the olive oil and nest the bowl in iced water is not decoration; cold oil is more viscous and cooks generally find the emulsion easier to hold. Warmth can make a batch separate, though the book names the commoner cause itself: oil added too fast.
- Rescuing a broken batchThe book's fix still works: start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the curdled mixture into it a spoonful at a time. A teaspoon of water or lemon juice as the new base does the same job.
- Olive oil choiceNineteenth-century "salad oil" was generally milder than a modern peppery extra-virgin, which will dominate and may taste bitter after vigorous beating; a light olive oil, or a neutral oil cut with a little good olive oil, is likely nearer the intended flavor.
- KeepingNeither dressing has the acidity or preservatives of jarred mayonnaise. Refrigerate and use within three or four days, and heed the note about dressing salads only just before serving.
These entries have the look of the salad-dressing pages of a turn-of-the-century American cooking-school manual; the Fannie Farmer school of cookery is often credited with making level measurements the American standard, though the page as printed here does not identify its source, so the attribution is not certain. Cooked or "boiled" dressings, thickened with whole eggs and stretched with diluted vinegar, used a fraction of the oil that mayonnaise required and appear widely in period cookbooks as the cheaper option for potato salad, coleslaw and cold meats where imported olive oil was an expense. Mayonnaise itself is generally taken to be French in origin and its name is still argued over, most often traced to the port of Mah ratratraditional rather than documented. What the two recipes together record is a moment when the emulsion was still entirely handwork: the ice bath, the drop-by-drop oil, and the choice of silver fork, whisk, wooden spoon or beater all belong to a kitchen with no blender, where a broken batch meant beginning again with another yolk.