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Tomatoes with Mayonnaise
Raw tomatoes, peeled and sliced, are delicious with mayonnaise, which is made by mixing gradually three parts of oil and one of vinegar with the yolk of an egg, and adding a seasoning of salt and pepper. Mustard may also be added if liked. The egg and seasoning are put in the bottom of a bowl with a small quantity of vinegar and mixed to a smooth cream; the oil and vinegar are then added alternately, a few drops at a time, until the desired quantity of mayonnaise is obtained. It must be kept in a cool place until wanted.
A bare-bones hand-whisked mayonnaise of the sort every professional kitchen made fresh each service. The proportions are workable but the vinegar is high by current taste, and the emulsion is the whole of the technique.
- Add the oil drop by drop at firstThe hinge of the recipe is the rate of addition. One yolk will hold roughly a cup of oil, but only if the first tablespoon or two goes in a few drops at a time with constant whisking; after the emulsion sets you can pour in a thin steady stream.
- The 3:1 ratio is sharper than modern mayonnaiseThree parts oil to one part vinegar gives a thin, pointedly acidic sauce closer to a dressing. Modern recipes commonly use a good deal more oil to acid. If you want the original flavour, keep the ratio; if you want a spoonable mayonnaise, hold the vinegar back and add it at the end to taste.
- Oil"Oil" here would most likely have meant olive oil. A neutral oil, or a blend of neutral with a quarter olive, gives the texture without bitterness.
- Eggs and holdingNothing here is cooked. Use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised. "A cool place" meant an icebox or a cellar; refrigerate at once and use within three days.
- If it breaksStart a fresh yolk, or a teaspoon of water, in a clean bowl and whisk the split mixture into it drop by drop. Splitting almost always means the oil went in faster than the yolk could take it, or the ingredients were at very different temperatures.
- Peeling the tomatoesScore the skins, thirty seconds in boiling water, then into ice water; the skins slip off. Slice, salt lightly and drain on a rack for ten minutes so the water they throw off does not thin the sauce on the plate.
- MustardThe optional mustard is not only flavour. Dry mustard or a spoonful of Dijon adds emulsifiers and makes the sauce noticeably easier to bring together.
- YieldOne yolk with about a cup of oil, at the recipe's three-to-one proportion, makes roughly a cup and a half of mayonnaise, enough to dress sliced tomatoes for six to eight.
Oscar Tschirky's book belongs to the moment when mayonnaise moved from a chef's secret to a household expectation. The sauce's name is traditionally traced to Mahón, the port on Minorca taken by the French in 1756, though the derivation has never been settled and rival explanations from manier (to handle) and from the town of Bayonne have circulated for as long. What is documented is its place in American dining rooms of the 1890s: hotel menus of the period lean heavily on cold dressed dishes, and a plate of peeled raw tomatoes under a hand-beaten mayonnaise was a small luxury, tomatoes still being seasonal and the sauce still being made to order by a cook with a bowl and a fork. Commercial jarred mayonnaise did not reach American groceries in quantity until the 1910s, which is why Oscar can assume his reader will beat it and why he ends, sensibly, with the instruction to keep it cool.