Homemade Salad Cream

There's a moment in early summer when the first proper lettuces arrive at the market, the round, soft sort with leaves the colour of pale jade, and they ask for something better than oil and vinegar. They ask for salad cream. Not the fluorescent stuff in the bottle. The real thing.

Salad cream is older than mayonnaise in British kitchens, and for years it lived in jars on supermarket shelves until most people forgot it had ever been homemade. Which is a shame, because it takes ten minutes and tastes like something. Cooked egg yolks pushed through a sieve, English mustard, a sharp cider vinegar, a slow pour of double cream. That's the whole thing. Sharp and mustardy and gently sweet, thinner than mayonnaise, glossy and pourable, the kind of dressing that clings to a butterhead leaf without drowning it.

I make a small jar most weeks through the summer. It goes on everything. New potatoes still warm from the pan. A wedge of cos with hard-boiled eggs and some good ham. Cold roast chicken on a Monday. Sliced tomatoes from the garden when they finally come in. We're only making dinner, but a spoonful of this turns a plate of cold things into a proper meal.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: yolks, mustard, vinegar, cream, lettuce, June. That was the whole entry. It hasn't needed updating.