Dressing
One tablespoonful of mustard, one-half tablespoonful of sugar, one quarter teaspoonful pepper, one quarter teaspoonful of salt, yolks of four uncooked eggs, juice of one lemon, one quarter of a cupful of vinegar, one pint of olive oil, one half cup of whipped cream; beat the yolks and dry ingredients until very light, with bowl set in pan of ice or cold water; add a few drops of oil at a time, until the dressing becomes thick; then add vinegar and lemon juice, and lastly whipped cream. Cream may be omitted without injury.
This is a hand-beaten mayonnaise, with whipped cream folded in at the end to lighten it. Everything depends on the rate at which the oil goes in.
- The hinge: oil, slowlyFour yolks will carry a pint of oil, but only if the first half cup goes in a few drops at a time while you beat without stopping. Once the base has visibly thickened you can move to a thin steady stream. Rushing the start is the commonest way this fails.
- "One tablespoonful of mustard"Almost certainly dry mustard powder, the usual sense of plain "mustard" in dressings of this period; it acts as an emulsifier as well as a seasoning. A tablespoon of prepared mustard would be milder and would add liquid at the wrong moment.
- Quantities in modern termsOne pint of olive oil is 2 cups; a quarter cupful of vinegar is 4 tablespoons. The finished dressing comes to roughly 3 cups without the cream, closer to 3½ with it — enough for a large party, so consider halving it.
- The bowl in ice waterCold slows the emulsion and helps the finished dressing hold its body, and it keeps the raw yolks out of the temperature range where bacteria multiply fastest. Keep it there for the whole beating, not just the start.
- Olive oil choiceA modern extra-virgin oil is more assertive than the refined "salad oil" sold for table use in this period, and vigorous prolonged beating can bring out bitterness in it. A mild olive oil, or a half-and-half blend with a neutral oil, may be closer to the intended flavour.
- If it breaksStart a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the split mixture into it a spoonful at a time. A teaspoon of the vinegar whisked in hard will sometimes pull back a batch that has only just begun to separate.
- Raw yolksNothing here is cooked. Use pasteurized eggs if you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, and keep the dressing refrigerated and use it within a few days.
- The cream versionWhipped cream turns this into what some older books call a cream mayonnaise, suited to fruit, chicken or a delicate green salad. Fold it in within an hour or two of serving; it deflates on standing. The recipe itself notes the cream may be omitted without injury.
Mayonnaise appears in American cookbooks by the middle of the nineteenth century and was, by 1900, the mark of a fashionable table — the older domestic tradition ran to boiled dressings thickened with egg and flour, which were cheaper, kept better, and did not demand prolonged unbroken beating. The name is generally traced to Mah dash;n, the port on Minorca, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. This particular version, enriched with whipped cream, belongs to the late-Victorian vogue for elaborate composed salads of fruit, cold fowl and shaped aspic, where a stiff, sharp mayonnaise would have overwhelmed the dish. That it appears at all with a pint of olive oil says something about the period: olive oil was an imported grocery item, and a recipe using two cupfuls at once was not an everyday one. Commercial jarred mayonnaise, which made all of this optional, was still a decade or so away.