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Mayonnaise Dressing
1 teaspoon powdered sugar teaspoon mustard, 1 tablespoon lemon if desired 1 cup olive oil juice 1 tablespoon vinegar Mix the salt and paprika, add other seasonings, and the yolks; beat well, adding the acid, gradually, beating it in with a Dover egg-beater. When all the acid has been added, turn in a teaspoonful of olive or other ) vegetable oil and continue the beating; add oil, a teaspoonful at a time, three or four times, beating vigorously meanwhile; then add the oil by the tablespoonful until all has been used. At the last beat in two or three tablespoonfuls of boiling water.
The boiling water is thought to keep the sauce from "turning" or curdling after it has been set aside. By adding all of the acid to the yolks before oil is used, the egg-beater may be used from the beginning. The larger surface over which the oil is spread to curdle. After the sauce is mixed, cover with an earthen or glass dish and set aside in a cool place. Russian dressing is made by combining mayonnaise, chili sauce and India relish in the proportion of mayonnaise and each chili sauce and India relish.
The ingredient list has come through badly garbled — the salt, paprika and egg yolks are named in the method but their quantities are lost, and the Russian dressing proportions have dropped out entirely. The method itself is complete and workable.
- What the ingredients probably wereStandard mayonnaise of this period runs to 2 egg yolks, 1 teaspoon salt, a little paprika, 1 teaspoon powdered sugar, ½ teaspoon mustard, 1 cup olive oil, 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1 tablespoon vinegar. The printed list here is missing figures; treat any reconstruction as a guess rather than the book's own.
- Dover egg-beaterA hand-cranked rotary beater, the standard American kitchen tool from the 1870s onward. A balloon whisk, a stick blender or a food processor all do the work; the recipe's whole point is that you need something faster than a fork.
- The acid-first trick is the hingeAdding all the lemon juice and vinegar to the yolks before any oil thins the base enough that a rotary beater can turn it from the start. It also makes the emulsion more forgiving, since the water phase is already large. Classical French practice does the opposite — oil drop by drop into thick yolks — and demands a whisk and patience.
- Oil by the teaspoonThe first few additions are where mayonnaise breaks. Three or four teaspoonfuls, each beaten in completely, establish the emulsion; after that a tablespoon at a time is safe, and with a machine running you can pour in a thin steady stream.
- The boiling water finishTwo or three tablespoons of boiling water at the end thins the sauce slightly and adds water to the emulsion, which does help it hold in the cold. It is not enough heat to cook the yolks or make the sauce keep any longer.
- Egg safetyThe yolks stay raw. Use pasteurized eggs, or shell eggs you trust, and skip it for anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised.
- Storage"A cool place" meant a larder or icebox. Refrigerate in a covered glass or ceramic dish and use within three or four days; there are no preservatives here and it will not behave like jarred mayonnaise.
- India relish and Russian dressingIndia relish is a sweet-sour chopped mustard pickle, closest today to a good sweet pickle relish. The book's proportions were lost in printing; roughly two parts mayonnaise to one part each chili sauce and relish makes a workable dressing, but treat that as a modern guess, not the book's figure.
- YieldAbout 1½ cups on the reconstruction above, enough for a salad for six to eight.
Mayonnaise is generally traced, on traditional rather than documented grounds, to the Menorcan port of Mahón and the French capture of the island in 1756 — hence mahonnaise. What is documented is how thoroughly the sauce was naturalized in American home cooking by the time this book appeared: the Dover-type rotary beater made a cup of mayonnaise a matter of minutes rather than an exercise in wrist endurance. The Russian dressing note at the end is a period marker too: mayonnaise cut with chili sauce and pickle relish was the new American salad fashion of the 1910s, and the same combination survives as Thousand Island.