Salad cream is more than a poor man’s mayonnaise

Salad cream makes me feel oddly patriotic. It’s one of those products that is so distinctively British that it has not travelled. Elsewhere, it is eschewed as a poor man’s mayonnaise. Its chief ingredients are hardboiled egg yolks, English mustard, vinegar and thick cream, and it was, in fact, the first product that Heinz produced exclusively for Great Britain, in Harlesden, north-west London, from 1914 onwards.

The Heinz version is, frankly, a wartime mayonnaise, constrained by shelf life and made with the cheaper ingredients available at the time, a little looser and distinctively sweeter than its mayonnaise equivalent. It really came into its own in the second world war during rationing. It’s easy to see why it would be sidelined as a making-do alternative; but with necessity being the mother of invention, it had an appeal all of its own. The stuff was in fact inspired by creamy salad dressings that had been around for much longer. Eliza Acton has a recipe in her 1845 cookbook (calling it ‘English sauce for salad’), as does Mrs Beeton in the 1861 Book of Household Management, and the celebrity chef William Kitchiner included one in his Cook’s Oracle (1815).

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Homemade or shop-bought, the flavour is unmistakeable: tart and sweet in equal measure. Some modern recipes call for an even split of cream and oil, but I feel this rather misses the point; the cream creates a lighter, more sprightly sauce than using oil does, making it distinctively different from mayonnaise, rather than a caricature of the more famous sauce.

It is also, unlike mayonnaise, very easy to make. Using cream – a naturally occurring emulsion – as the base, rather than oil, means that the sauce won’t ‘break’ as you make it, and it will sit happily in the fridge once made. The hard-boiled yolks should be grated by hand to ensure a lack of lumps, then whisked together with the vinegar and mustard, before the cream is incorporated until smooth and slightly thickened. I like to make mine with a stick blender, which slightly whips the cream as the mixture comes together, creating a thicker, lusher product, made for spooning and dolloping rather than squirting or drizzling.

My particular memory of salad cream (the bottled version) is that in our family it was a non-negotiable in a corned beef sandwich. I’m not sure it would necessarily have featured elsewhere in that 1990s household which clearly fancied itself as socially aspirational, where it rubbed shoulders with a bottle of ready-made M&S French dressing and the obligatory jar of mayo. But it’s hard to think of a finer pairing: the zippy, vinegary salad cream, with its underlying sweetness, cutting through the fatty, salty corned beef, all of it on thickly buttered sliced white bread. In fact, the surprising harmony it brings to a whole host of sandwiches means that in 2018 Heinz toyed with the idea of changing its name to ‘Sandwich cream’, but the outcry that ensued was so resounding that they backed down. The message was clear: don’t mess with our salad cream.

If you’re after a more chic application than a corned beef sandwich (and I don’t blame you – I recognise that my corned beef evangelism will only touch those who are already partial to the stuff), then salad cream is perfect for the best of summer produce: spooned generously on to waxy new potatoes that have been boiled until their skins are just peeling away, or alongside thick slices of fat, sun-warmed tomatoes. Radishes dunked into a bowl of the sauce are a harmony of peppery, zippy, sweet-sour crunch. And hard-boiling a bunch more eggs while you’re making the sauce, and then bathing them in the buff yellow cream, will give the Gallic oeufs mayonnaise a run for their money.

Serves 6-8  
Hands-on time 5 minutes  
Cooking time 15 minutes

• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• ½ tsp English mustard
• 3 tbsp white wine vinegar
• ½ tsp fine salt
• 150ml double cream

1. Hard-boil the eggs. Place the eggs in a small pan and cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer, then set a timer for ten minutes. When the time is up, drain them and place into cold water until cool. Peel the eggs and remove the egg yolks.
2. If making by hand, grate the egg yolks into a bowl; if using a hand blender, there is no need. Add the sugar, salt, mustard and vinegar and whisk or blend until smooth.
3. Add the cream a little at a time, whisking or blending until the mixture is smooth and has acquired the texture of lightly whipped cream – not too thick. It should be spoonable but not runny.
4. Taste the sauce, and adjust the salt, sugar or vinegar, if needed, to balance it. It will keep in the fridge, covered, for three to four days, depending on the age of your cream.