Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [64]
The writer Ambrose Bierce called mayonnaise “one of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.” The origin of the name is murky, though certainly French. The straightforward explanation is that it is derived from moyeunaise, with moyeu being the old French word for “egg yolk.” Or perhaps from manier, which means “to handle.”
Other theories have to do with military triumphs, one as early as 1589. Another says it wasn’t named or even created until almost two hundred years later, during the Seven Years War, in honor of Colonel Rochambeau’s victory at Port Maho in the western Mediterranean. His commander, the Duc de Richelieu, ordered a celebratory dinner, and the chef invented a new sauce for the occasion, mahonnaise, named for the conquered city. Alexandre Dumas, imaginative if not always accurate, also ties mayonnaise to Richelieu, writing in his dictionary of food that the sauce was named momonnaise in honor of the Duc’s capture of General Mamon.
The secret, then as now, is first to have all the ingredients at room temperature.
MAYONNAISE
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon dry mustard
2 cups olive oil
¼ cup lemon juice or wine vinegar
With a fork or whisk (or an electric mixer), beat the egg yolks until they’re thick, then add the salt and dry mustard. Beat in, a few drops at a time, the olive oil, blending completely with each addition. Adding too much oil at a time will make the mayonnaise curdle. When it’s thick, stir in lemon juice or wine vinegar to thin it to the desired consistency. Makes about two cups.
YEAR OF EATING
Following a wedding in ancient Egypt, there was a kind of trial period for the marriage that took place not only in the sleeping quarters but also at the table. It was called “a year of eating,” after which the bride and groom either parted or continued as a couple. Presumably, this took into account that a married couple would spend many more of their waking hours at the table than in bed, and this was where true compatibility lay.
GARLIC
When Amelia Simmons wrote the first American cookbook in 1796, she said that “Garlicks, tho’ used by the French, are better adapted to the uses of medicine than cookery.”
She was only echoing something that had been common knowledge for several thousand years, though there is still no clear understanding of just what makes garlic effective against leprosy heart problems, the common cold, headaches, and even certain cancers. In ancient Greece, it was also thought to give strength; soldiers ate it before battle, and athletes before competition.
The most potent member of the onion family, garlic has not only been eaten since antiquity but has been used for everything from mummification to fending off vampires. Also known as the “stinking rose,” garlic in cooking has at times been considered the height of sophistication and at others, a mark of the lower classes.
Harvested only once a year, in late spring or early summer, garlic is so mild when it is new that you can eat it raw; it grows stronger as it ages and dries. The white varieties found in most supermarkets last for about six months, but once the cloves grow soft or develop spots, they can’t be used, and even before that, the green sprout in the center should be removed to keep it from giving off a bitter taste.
JULIETTE RÉCAMIER
In 1792, at the age of fifteen, Juliette Bernard married a wealthy French banker named Récamier, almost three times her age. It was an arranged marriage, and the young wife devoted herself not to her husband, but to a fashionable salon she later established, attracting important literary and political figures. Many of them fell in love with her, and she was painted by both David and Gérard as seductive and beautiful, though she had little interest in physical pleasures.
When she was forty, she herself fell in love for the first time, with Vicomte