Mayonnaise

“ Mayonnaise.—Place in the bottom of a salad bowl the yolk of one raw egg, a level teaspoonful of salt, the same quantity of dry mustard, a saltspoonful of white pepper, as much cayenne as can be taken up on the point of a very small pen-knife blade, and the juice of half a lemon; mix these ingredients with a wooden salad spoon until they assume a creamy white appearance; then add, drop by drop, three gills of salad oil, stirring the mayonnaise constantly; if it thickens too rapidly, thin it with a little of the juice from the second half of the lemon, until all is used ”

“ A few drops of onion juice may be added.
2. Mayonnaise dressing.
Ingredients.
Method.
Stir together the eggs, mustard, salt, pepper, and sugar. Add the oil, a drop at a time, stirring and beating constantly. The back of a silver fork is a good thing for mixing mayonnaise, though some people prefer a Dover beater. As the dressing becomes very thick it should be thinned occasionally with vinegar and lemon, alternately, but never let it lose its consistency. After the first, the oil may be added more rapidly. All ingredients and utensils must be cold. ”

“ Most people think mayonnaise is very difficult to make, but, really, it is as easy as baking potatoes, after you have once learned how. Every salad given before is just as nice with mayonnaise as with French dressing, and you can try each one both ways; then there are these, which are better with mayonnaise.
Chicken Salad
1 cup of chicken cut in large bits. 1/2 cup of celery, cut up and then dried. 2 hard-boiled eggs, cut into good-sized pieces. 6 olives, stoned and cut up. 1/2 cup mayonnaise.
Mix all very lightly together, as stirring will make the salad mussy; put on lettuce. ”

“ Or the chutney can be simply chopped up fine and added to the butter sauce without rubbing through the wire sieve.
Mayonnaise Sauce.—This is the most delicious of all cold sauces. It is composed entirely of raw yolk of egg and oil, flavoured with a dash of vinegar. When made properly it should be of the consistency of butter in summer time. Many women cooks labour under the delusion that it requires the addition of cream. Mayonnaise sauce is made as follows:— Break an egg and separate the yolk from the white, and place the yolk at the bottom of a large basin. ”

“ I have forgotten in the above enumeration the crowning dish of all, the Braousa, which drew down applause from the company; the Mayonnaise, in short, which Madame Miau concocted with her own hands. Every one thinks they can make the Mayonnaise sauce, because they find the ingredients given in various treatises upon cookery ”

“ In preparing mayonnaise, there is absolutely no danger of curdling, if the eggs be fresh and the oil be added slowly, especially if the materials and utensils have been thoroughly chilled. If the yolks do not thicken when beaten with the condiments, but spread out over the bowl, you have sufficient indication that they will not thicken upon the addition of the oil, and it were better to select others and begin again. ”

“ Fill tomatoes with cucumbers (or celery) cut in small cubes and moistened with mayonnaise dressing. Arrange on lettuce leaves and garnish top with mayonnaise dressing.
Laboratory management.—1⁄2 egg yolk (1 teaspoonful) and 1⁄4 cup of olive oil is as small a quantity as is practicable to use in making the mayonnaise. This quantity made by groups of two works out well as the process of adding the oil drop by drop is difficult for a beginner working alone. The boiled dressing works in well as a variation of the boiled custard. ”

“ I am perfectly aware that the above is not a strict Mayonnaise dressing, in which the egg yolks should be raw, instead of cooked. But, like the Scotsman, I have “tried baith,” and prefer my own way, which more resembles the sauce Tartare, than the Mayonnaise of our lively [Pg 153] neighbours, who, by the way, merely wipe, instead of wash, their lettuces and endive, to preserve, as they say, the flavour. ”

“ If too much vinegar is added to mayonnaise it robs it of its consistency and flavor. All salads must be mixed at the last minute, at serving time. Mayonnaise dressing may be made hours before and the meat, lettuce and celery prepared, but each must be kept in a separate dish until mixing time. ”

“ REMOULADE SALAD DRESSING This is a good dressing when mayonnaise is not liked. It is made in the same way as mayonnaise, using hard boiled eggs (yolks) instead of raw ones. Put the yolks into a basin and work very smoothly with the bowl of a wooden spoon; add the oil gradually, using about one gill to every two yolks. ”

“ A smooth consistency may be restored by taking yolk of another egg and adding curdled mixture slowly to it. It is desirable to have bowl containing mixture placed in a larger bowl of crushed ice, to which a small quantity of water has been added. Olive oil for making Mayonnaise should always be thoroughly chilled. A silver fork, wire whisk, small wooden spoon, or Dover Egg-beater may be used as preferred. If one has a Keystone Egg-beater, dressing may be made very quickly by its use. Mayonnaise should be stiff enough to hold its shape. It soon liquefies when added to meat or vegetables ”

“ Every meat presented its own aroma,"—it was not cooked in a gas stove,—"every vegetable its own shade of verdure. The mayonnaise was fixed in ice, like Ninon's description of Sevigné's heart, 'une citronille frité à la neige.' The tempered chill of the plombière which held the place of the eternal fondus and soufflets of our English tables, anticipated and broke the stronger shock of the exquisite avalanche, which, with the hue and odour of fresh-gathered nectarines, satisfied every sense and dissipated every coarser flavour. ”

“ Take three tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise, half a pint of stiff aspic jelly, and a gill of tomato sauce in which a teaspoonful of gelatine has been dissolved. Every utensil used must be ice-cold, the jelly must be quite cold, but not set. Put the tomato sauce, the jelly, and the mayonnaise (which should be left on the ice till the last thing) into a bowl set in another bowl of pounded ice; whisk them together until they begin to look white; then stir the lobster in it, with a teaspoonful of very finely chopped chervil and tarragon; fill the soufflée cases, piling the dressing high ”

“ Ingredients.—1 gill of mayonnaise sauce, No. 201, 1⁄2 a gill of aspic jelly, (see jellies) , 1⁄2 a gill of cream, 1 tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar, 1 teaspoonful of anchovy-essence, 1 dessertspoonful of chopped gherkins, 1 dessertspoonful of chopped chutney, 1⁄2 a cucumber, salt, pepper, sugar.
Method.—Peel the cucumber thinly, cut it into small pieces, and cook till tender in salted water. Drain off the water, and rub the cucumber through a fine sieve. Carefully mix the mayonnaise with the cream, anchovy-essence, gherkins, and chutney. ”

“ Hard-boil your eggs, allowing half an egg for each person. Take out the yolk. While they are boiling and afterwards cooling in water, make a small quantity of mayonnaise sauce. Peel the eggs, cut them through lengthways, and take out the yolks. Crumble these with a little chopped herbs, and add the mayonnaise. Fill the eggs with this mixture, and place them in a dish with chopped lettuce round it, to which you may add a little more of the sauce. ”

“ Mix lettuce, celery, and lemon juice thoroughly, then add mayonnaise and salt to taste.
WATER LILY SALAD Lettuce leaves. Mayonnaise dressing Eggs, hard-boiled, 8.
Cut crisp lettuce leaves into pointed strips, like the outer leaves of a water lily. Cut the whites of hard-boiled eggs also into strips, to make the petals. Mash all but two or three of the yolks, mix them with the mayonnaise, and fill in the center of the white petals. Take the remaining yolks and put through a fine sieve, and scatter this over the yellow center and white petals to resemble pollen of the flower. ”

“ Wash and dry the lettuce, tear it into small pieces, put it into a bowl with the small pieces of lobster, and add gradually sufficient Mayonnaise to moisten the whole. Arrange this in the centre of a round dish in the form of a dome, mask it with very stiff Mayonnaise sauce, and surround it with pieces of hard-boiled egg. Garnish tastefully with strips of anchovy, strips or slices of gherkin, fancifully-cut pieces of beetroot, olives, and capers. ”

“ Put the pulp on the ice until just before serving; then dress with oil and vinegar exactly as directed for lettuce, etc.
Meat or fish salads should always be dressed with mayonnaise. I say nothing of the well- [304] known lobster and chicken salads, which are so general that one is tempted to think the majority of people do not know how excellent some other combination salads are. Salmon salad—the fish flaked, laid on a bed of crisp lettuce with a border of the leaves, and masked with mayonnaise, with a garnish of aspic—is both handsome and delicious ”

“ Cottage cheese and minced hard-boiled eggs, mixed with mayonnaise.
96. Cold roast beef, chopped fine, seasoned with tomato catsup, celery salt, Worcestershire, and grated onion.
97. Raisins chopped fine and worked to a paste with sherry.
98. Cream cheese and shredded green peppers.
99. Equal parts of tongue and chicken, minced fine, and mixed with mayonnaise.
100. Cold, boiled shad roe and cucumbers, finely minced, and mixed with French dressing or mayonnaise.
101. People who are not satisfied with the above fillings are at liberty to invent their own. ”

“ A few chopped capers, olives, and gherkins make it a good Tartare sauce; and a little tomato purée will make it a red Mayonnaise to use with cold boiled fish.
MAYONNAISE Yolk of 1 egg. 1⁄2 teaspoonful of salt. Dash of cayenne. 1 cupful of salad oil. 11⁄2 teaspoonfuls of lemon-juice.
Let the oil and egg be thoroughly chilled before beginning to make Mayonnaise. In summer it is well to stand the soup [289] -plate in which the dressing is being mixed in a dish of cracked ice; stir constantly with a silver fork or a wooden spoon. Have the yolk entirely free from any white of the egg ”

“ She had gotten it down to a fine art since she could mix and read at the same time. She declared it was a plain waste of time to use your hands without using your head and since turning a mayonnaise mixer crank required no intelligence beyond that of seeing that the funnel [43] was filled with olive oil, she was able to indulge in her passion for poetry while she was making the quarts of mayonnaise that the young housekeepers dealt out so generously to their week-enders.
“Listen to this!” and Nan turned the crank slowly while she read:
“‘Alas for all high hopes and all desires! ”

“ The girls’ experiments in making mayonnaise resulted in Julie’s screwing up her courage one day and going to the leading grocery of Radnor. She asked for the proprietor and laid before him her scheme, at the same time showing him a sample of the mayonnaise. Poor Julie, who did not know what it meant to cry her wares in open market, felt very uncomfortable and flushed quite red as she talked ”

“ Our store cupboard is supposed to contain the following provisions in tins:—Ox-tail soup, preserved salmon, mayonnaise sauce, curried rabbit, asparagus, plum pudding, pine apple in syrup, as well as a bottle of jelly. I may, however, mention, with regard to the mayonnaise sauce, that should you have a bottle of oil in the house and a couple of eggs, it would be better to make some fresh sauce from the egg and oil direct. Our cupboard will also contain a bottle of pickled walnuts, a bottle of capers, a bottle of olives, and a bottle of anchovies. ”

“ Have your mayonnaise in a bottle, and dress the salad with it after sitting down, on a very slippery, ferny rock, at the table. Truth compels the historian to observe, that this is delicious with the ham, and you will not mind in the least, until the next day, the large grease-spot on the side breadth of your gown. ”

“ Chicken mayonnaise sandwiches may be made in the same way, rejecting all bits of skin or gristle, and omitting the lemon juice. Ham, tongue, and shrimp mayonnaise sandwiches are also good prepared in similar fashion.
Veal Galantine.—Select a breast of veal about eighteen inches long by twelve wide, and remove from it all bits of bone or gristle. Spread the inside of it with a layer of sausage meat, or of salt or corned pork finely chopped, and highly seasoned with minced onion, parsley, and sweet-herbs. ”

“ Garnish, either with a purée of tunny, salmon, milt, &c., or a hash or salpicon of lobster, shrimp, &c., thickened by means of a mayonnaise with jelly, or a fine macédoine of vegetables with mayonnaise, or a purée composed of the withdrawn yolks combined with a little butter, some cold Béchamel sauce, and herbs. ”

“ Put a spoonful of mayonnaise in each leaf, then arrange on each one in rosette form the white of a hard-boiled egg cut lengthwise into strips, and place a whole yolk in the center.
No. 11. Salad of asparagus tips. See illustration No. 98.
No. 12. Salad of artichoke bottoms. Take artichoke bottoms as they come from the can. Rinse them off with cold water. Spread each one with mayonnaise and pile on it as many vegetables as it will hold. Use green peas, string beans, flowerets of cauliflower, or any mixture of vegetables that may be convenient. ”

“ In all cases the skin and bone must be removed, and the fish completely masked with thick Mayonnaise sauce, the stiffening properties of which are greatly increased by the addition of a little liquid, but nearly cold, aspic jelly. When procurable, a little endive should be mixed with the lettuce, for although the somewhat bitter flavour of this salad plant is disliked by many people, its delicate, feathery leaves greatly improve the appearance of any dish of which it forms a part. ”