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Mayonnaise Dressing
Seat a raw egg (some use the yolks only) with a salt-spoon of salt (using a wooden-spoon) until it is thoroughly smooth, add a tea-spoon mixed mustard made rather thicker than usual; when quite smooth add by degrees (a few drops only at a time) a half-pint of olive-oil, taking care to blend each portion of it with the egg before adding more. This ought to be as smooth as honey, and thick enough so that a spoon will stand up in it; dilute with vinegar until it assumes the consistency of thick cream. A little anchovy may be added if desired. Lemon juice may be used instead of vinegar, or a few drops may be added with the vinegar. This is the smoothest and richest of salad dressings. The oily flavor is entirely lost in combination with the raw egg. When you begin to add the oil, drop a very little at first as it may curdle the egg. This sauce keeps well, if bottled and corked with a glass stopper, and it may be made at any time in advance, if only yolks are used, when yolks are left over from baking. In summer, place oil and eggs in a cold place, half an hour before making.
The technique here is sound and still the basis of every hand-whisked mayonnaise, but the food-safety instructions are not: this is a raw-egg emulsion the book expects you to bottle and keep for weeks at cellar temperature.
- Why it fails — raw egg held at room temperatureNothing in this recipe reaches a temperature that kills Salmonella Enteritidis, which can be present inside an intact shell egg. Bottled and corked as directed and stored at ambient temperature, the dressing is a growth medium rather than a preserve; the acid from a few spoons of vinegar is not reliably enough to control it.
- Why it fails — "may be made at any time in advance"The book asserts that the sauce "keeps well" bottled and corked, but gives no storage temperature, no measured acidity and no keeping limit, so there is no way to judge when it has become unsafe. A current recipe using pasteurized egg and refrigerated storage should be used instead.
- Why it fails — the optional anchovyThe optional anchovy -- "A little anchovy may be added if desired" adds a further uncooked ingredient to an already unheated emulsion, though the governing hazard remains the raw egg. Anchovy paste in a fresh, refrigerated dressing is a different matter entirely.
- Reading the measuresA salt-spoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon. A half-pint of oil is one cup in US measure, which is a great deal of oil for a single egg and explains the insistence on adding it a few drops at a time.
- "Seat a raw egg"Almost certainly a slip for "Beat." The wooden spoon is not superstition: a spoon dragged through the egg gives the slow, shearing action an emulsion needs.
- "Mixed mustard"Mustard powder worked to a paste with liquid, here "rather thicker than usual." Its role is partly flavour and partly emulsifier.
- The cold-ingredient noteThe instruction to chill oil and eggs half an hour beforehand in summer is about emulsion stability, not safety. Warm oil breaks into the yolk too readily and the sauce splits.
Mayonnaise is generally said to have reached American cookbooks from French practice sometime in the nineteenth century, and its name is still argued over — it is variously traced to Mahón in Menorca, to the French moyeu, an old word for egg yolk, and to the Duc de Mayenne, none of which is documented well enough to settle. What is clear is the note about using "yolks left over from baking": in a household that whipped whites for cake and meringue, spare yolks were a standing problem, and an oil-and-yolk dressing was one of the few things that could absorb them in quantity. The Dixie Cook Book (1883) takes pains to describe the finished texture — smooth as honey, thick enough to stand a spoon in.