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Mayonnaise Dressing (Blanchard Evaporated Eggs make)
Blanchard Evaporated Eggs make better Mayonnaise Dressing than shell eggs as the shell eggs contain an excessive amount of moisture for the proper making of this dressing. For this reason the amount of water added to the evaporated eggs has been reduced in this case. In preparing this dressing the directions must be closely followed.
Directions: Two heaping tablespoonfuls Blanchard Evaporated Eggs dissolved in four tablespoonfuls water, one level teaspoonful salt, one-half teaspoonful mustard, one teaspoonful sugar, dash of cayenne.
After thoroughly mixing the above, add slowly one pint salad oil, juice of one lemon and one tablespoonful vinegar.
Add oil, lemon juice and vinegar in half tablespoonfuls at a time, thoroughly beating mixture with egg beater after adding each half tablespoonful.
This is a standard hand-beaten mayonnaise built on a rehydrated dried-egg product rather than shell eggs. The proportions work with modern powdered egg, but the branded product is long gone and the method needs one adjustment in equipment.
- The hinge: half a tablespoon at a timeThe instruction to add oil, lemon juice and vinegar in half-tablespoon additions with full beating between each is the whole recipe. A pint of oil is a great deal for two eggs' worth of rehydrated whole egg, and adding it too fast will break the emulsion.
- Blanchard Evaporated EggsA branded whole-egg powder no longer sold. Modern dried whole egg works: the usual rehydration is about 1 tablespoon powder to 2 tablespoons water per egg, so the quantities here amount to roughly two eggs' worth at the standard dilution, with the water reduced only insofar as the spoonfuls of powder are heaping.
- Buy pasteurizedNothing in this dressing is cooked. Current commercial dried egg powder is pasteurized during drying, which is the version to use; unpasteurized shell eggs beaten raw into a dressing that then sits in the refrigerator are a different proposition.
- Salad oilIn this period that usually means a refined neutral oil, cottonseed most commonly, though olive oil was also sold as salad oil. Use a mild vegetable or grapeseed oil; extra-virgin olive oil at this volume can turn bitter under prolonged beating.
- Mustard means dry mustardHalf a teaspoon of mustard powder, not prepared table mustard. It is there partly for flavour and partly because mustard powder helps stabilize the emulsion.
- Equipment"Egg beater" means a rotary hand beater. A stand mixer with the whisk, an electric hand mixer, or a food processor with the oil trickled through the feed tube all do the job; an immersion blender in a narrow jar is fastest.
- Yield and keepingAbout two and a half cups. Refrigerate in a sealed jar and use within three or four days.
- If it splitsStart again in a clean bowl with a fresh spoonful of the rehydrated egg mixture and beat the broken batch into it, half a tablespoon at a time, as though it were oil.
Desiccated and "evaporated" egg powders were a serious commercial business in the decades before and around the First World War, when shell eggs were seasonal, expensive in winter and unreliable in transit; bakeries and institutional kitchens bought dried egg by the tin, and manufacturers pushed hard to get it into home kitchens as well. Books like The Bride's Cook Book were part of that push, which is why this entry reads as advertising copy before it becomes a method, and why it argues that shell eggs are actually inferior for mayonnaise. The technical claim is not nonsense: mayonnaise is an emulsion whose stability depends on the ratio of oil to water, and a rehydrated egg with the water deliberately reduced does give a stiffer, more forgiving base.