No. 613

Mayonnaise Sauce with Jelly and Jellied

Sauce Mayonnaise a la Gelee et Collee

In order to make this mayonnaise set a thin tin salad bowl on chopped ice containing one pint of white jelly (No. 103), add to it a pint of oil, a gill of tarragon vinegar, a little salt, and some white or red pepper. Stir the mixture well with an egg-beater being careful to remove all that adheres to the sides, then add little by little the juice of one lemon; also some chopped and blanched chervil may be advantageously added to the sauce.

Mayonnaise Sauce Jellied.-Use an ordinary mayonnaise (No. 606) with oil, pouring into it slowly some cold liquid jelly (No. 103). A jellied mayonnaise may also be prepared by whipping the jelly on ice and incorporating into it at the same time some oil and vinegar, exactly the same as for the egg mayonnaise.

← No. 612 Mayonnaise Sauce, Green with Fine Herbs, Pri Cold Sauces No. 614 Mayonnaise Sauce with Fruit Jelly →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two related coating sauces from Ranhofer's kitchen: one an eggless emulsion built on aspic instead of yolk, the other ordinary mayonnaise stiffened with liquid jelly so it will cling to cold fish, poultry or vegetables. Both stand or fall on temperature.

The hinge: everything stays coldThe emulsion here is held not by egg yolk but by gelatin setting as it chills, so the bowl must sit on ice and the jelly must be liquid but cool — barely fluid, as the recipe's "cold liquid jelly" implies. Warm jelly will not thicken as you whisk; jelly that has already begun to set will go grainy and break.
"White jelly (No. 103)"Ranhofer's cross-reference is to one of his savoury aspic jellies, not a fruit preserve — No. 614 handles fruit jelly separately. A firm, well-seasoned unsweetened aspic is the modern equivalent; if you use commercial gelatin, aim for a jelly that sets firm enough to unmold.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. The proportions therefore run one pint jelly to one pint oil to 4 oz tarragon vinegar, plus the lemon — a large batch, a little over a quart of finished sauce, sized for a banquet buffet rather than a dinner for four. Scale down by quarters.
Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and easy enough to make by steeping a branch of tarragon in white wine vinegar for a week or two. Plain white wine vinegar plus a little chopped tarragon is a reasonable stand-in; cider vinegar is too assertive.
Thin tin salad bowlChosen because thin metal conducts the cold of the ice straight into the sauce. Stainless steel set in an ice bath does the same job; a ceramic or glass bowl insulates and will work against you.
Egg-beaterA rotary hand beater. A balloon whisk is fine, and a stick blender will emulsify faster than either, but keep the ice bath under it — the blender's motor and friction add heat.
Scrape the sidesThe instruction to remove all that adheres is not fussiness. Sauce smeared up the chilled wall of the bowl sets solid, and those lumps will not redissolve into the finished mayonnaise.
Serving and holdingUse it as a coating sauce, poured over cold cooked fish, chicken or eggs while still pourable, then set in the refrigerator. The jellied version made from ordinary mayonnaise contains raw yolk; keep it refrigerated and serve within a day, and use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone vulnerable.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the professional service manual of that restaurant. Sauces like this one belong to the world of the cold buffet, where a poached salmon or a galantine had to look immaculate on a silver platter for the length of a long meal — hence a mayonnaise reinforced with aspic so it would coat rather than slide. The technique is the classic mayonnaise coll\-froid work, and the eggless first version is a neat piece of nineteenth-century kitchen physics: gelatin, whipped over ice, will hold oil in suspension much as yolk does. Ranhofer numbered his recipes and cross-referenced them relentlessly, which is why this page reads as a set of instructions to a cook who already has the stock jelly and the base mayonnaise standing ready.

Century Old Kitchen · Sauce

Every sauce, printed twice.

You just read one recipe three ways — as it was printed, made cookable for today, and set in its history. This book does exactly that for 250 vintage sauces, gravies & relishes, gathered in one place.

Get it on Kindle → Also in paperback