A Swiss Mayonnaise

Instructions

1. Beat half a pound of butter to a cream.
2. Hard-boil six fresh eggs. Cut them into quarters, separate the yolks carefully from the whites, and pound the yolks to a perfect paste. Reserve the whites for the garnish.
3. Add the butter very gradually to the pounded yolks.
4. When these are blended into a smooth sauce, add the finest salad oil that can be procured, a few drops at a time, working the mixture as for the mayonnaise of Chapter VI until no particle of it remains visible.
5. Throw in a small quantity of salt, and sufficient good vinegar, in very small portions, to give an agreeable acidity. The sauce should be very thick.
6. Carve two delicate boiled fowls very neatly and trim the joints into handsome form.
7. Lay the inferior parts upon a large plate and spread a portion of the sauce upon them; arrange them in a flat layer in the serving dish. Sauce more of the joints in the same way and arrange them symmetrically over the others, building a sort of pyramid with the whole.
8. Decorate it with the whites of the eggs and the hearts of small lettuces cut in halves. Place these round the base alternately with whole bantams' or plovers' eggs boiled hard - cut a small slice from the large end of each so they can be stood upright. A slight branch of parsley or other foliage may be stuck in the top.
9. Variations: roast chickens entirely divested of the skin can always be substituted for boiled ones, separated into single joints except for the wings; the quite inferior parts need not be used at all. Acton notes that fresh lemon-juice might be substituted in part for the vinegar, with a little fine cayenne - but she adheres to her original Swiss receipt even where she thinks the flavour might be slightly improved.
10. For a fish-salad: flavour the same sauce rather highly with cayenne and other condiments, and to taste with essence of anchovies or anchovy butter, colouring it with lobster-coral. Serve with alternate slices of lobster - cut obliquely to increase their size - and of cold turbot or large soles, raised into a high border or chain round a dish, the centre filled with young fresh salad and sauced the instant it is sent to table.