By beating the egg a minute before adding the oil, there is little danger of the sauce curdling; yet if, by adding too much oil at first, it should possibly curdle, immediately interrupt the operation. Put the yolks of one or two eggs on another plate; beat them well, and add the curdled Mayonnaise by degrees, and finish by adding more oil, lemon-juice, vinegar, salt, and cayenne according to taste. If lemons are not at hand, many use vinegar instead.
Delmonico uses four yolks of eggs for two quart-bottles of oil. It is only necessary, then, to use one yolk for a pint of oil, the egg only being a foundation for the sauce. It is easier, however, to begin with more yolks: many use three of them for a gill of oil. The sauce will not curdle so easily if the few drops of vinegar are used at first, after a very little oil is used. It keeps perfectly well by putting it into a glass preserve or pickle bottle, with a ground-glass stopper. It is well to have enough made to last a week at least. The opportunity of making it may be taken, and adding it to the Mayonnaise bottle, when there are extra yolks left, after the whites of the eggs are used for other purposes, such as white cake, corn-starch pudding, etc.
It requires about a quarter of an hour to make this sauce. In summer, the process of making it is greatly facilitated by placing the eggs and oil in the ice-chest half an hour before using them. Sometimes, for the sake of a change, the Mayonnaise sauce is made green. It is then called
Sauce à la Ravingote.
Here is Carême’s receipt for it: “Take a good handful of chervil, together with some tarragon, and a few cives. When these herbs have been washed, put them into boiling water for five or six minutes, with a little salt; after which, cool, drain, and squeeze them dry. Pound them well, adding a spoonful of Mayonnaise sauce; then pass the whole through a sieve, and mix with the Mayonnaise sauce. If you find it too pale a green, add a little spinach prepared in the same way.”
It is more convenient and simple to add boiled and mashed green pease to the sauce for coloring. The green Mayonnaise is sometimes used to spread over a cold boiled fish (marinated). The dish is garnished with lettuce heads. Sometimes, for lobster or fish salads, the Mayonnaise sauce is prepared red.
Red Mayonnaise Sauce.
Pound some lobster coral, pass it through a sieve, and mix it with the Mayonnaise sauce.
French Dressing.
Ingredients: One table-spoonful of vinegar, three table-spoonfuls of olive-oil, one salt-spoonful of pepper, one salt-spoonful of salt, one even tea-spoonful of onion scraped fine. Many use tarragon vinegar, i. e., vinegar in which tarragon has been soaked.