Mayonnaise sauce is certainly one of the most useful and
popular of all cold sauces. Although many seem to find it
hard to get it as they wish it, it is perhaps one of the simplest
of all. You must be sure that the oil you use is thoroughly
good, or the result will be very painful ; and be equally certain
of your vinegar and eggs. Assuming that these are all satis-
factory, set to work in the following manner :—
Commence with the dry ingredients, and put into a soup-
plate a teaspoonful of mustard powder, half a saltspoonful of
salt, and the same of mignonette pepper. Bruise these together
thoroughly with the back of a silver spoon. Now add a little
oil, and work your materials to a paste, dropping in the oil
patiently by degrees until you get it nice and moist ; next beat
up gently with it the yolks of two raw eggs one by one, and
continue your beating, adding oil without measure, and judging
by your eye when you think you have made enough sauce, for
the tarragon vinegar you finally add will not be more than
a good dessertspoonful. The moment the vinegar is added
the sauce will assume a creamy appearance, and when worked
sufficiently, will be ready to pass through a strainer into the
sauce-boat.
If made in hot weather early in the afternoon, the sauce-boat
should be placed in the refrigerator ; but, to be successful,
mayonnaise sauce ought, if possible, to be made as near the
time of service as possible. When cream is used it takes the
place of the oil, but if only a little can be spared a dessert-
spoonful may be added as a last touch to the sauce I have
described with good effect. All mayonnaise sauces should be
served as cold as possible, and in summer should be iced—i.e.,
the bowl containing them should be set over some crushed ice
till the sauce is wanted.
The points in this sauce to be noted are, the order in which
the various ingredients should be introduced, the use of the
raw yolks in conjunction with the steadily beaten oil to produce
the thick creaminess you want, the liberal use of good oil, and
the addition, last of all, in sparing quantity, of the tarragon
vinegar. I am aware that most writers on cookery say that
the vinegar should be worked in with the oil ; but, having
tried both methods, I prefer my own. The oil and raw eggs
are quicker thickened alone, and by reserving the vinegar to the
last you can regulate the quantity by taste to a nicety. You
do not want an acid sauce at all, remember. English people,
as a rule, ruin their mayonnaise and salad dressings by mea-
suring the oil and vinegar they use in nearly equal portions.
No artist measures these ingredients. You might as well
expect a painter to tell you the number of grains of the colours
he used in painting a picture.
You may put in a little onion when mixing this sauce ; but
whilst permitting the flavour “scarce suspected to animate the
whole,” you must on no account permit the “atoms to lurk