Real Caesar dressing is an emulsion built on a raw egg yolk, sharpened with anchovy and lemon and finished with hard cheese. It is not the thick white stuff from a bottle, and it is not mayonnaise with Parmesan stirred in. Done properly it is thin enough to coat a romaine leaf without weighing it down, savory in a way that is hard to place until you know the anchovies are in there, and it takes about ten minutes with a mortar and a whisk.

Two things worth saying before you start. The anchovies are not optional and they will not make it taste like fish; they dissolve into the base and read as depth. And this uses a raw yolk, which is a real food-safety decision rather than a stylistic one, so read the egg note below before you shop. It dresses four generously as a salad.

Equipment

Anchovy and garlic have to become a smooth paste before anything else happens, because chopped pieces never fully disperse and you end up biting into raw garlic. Crushing beats chopping here: the Enameled Cast Iron Mortar & Pestle Set breaks the fibers down against a rough surface in a way a blade cannot, and the salt you add acts as an abrasive while you work. Once the paste is made you are building an emulsion by hand, adding oil slowly while whisking without stopping, and more wires means finer droplets and a more stable sauce, so the Stainless Steel Whisk Egg Beater is doing mechanical work rather than stirring. I whisk in the Large Capacity Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl with Scale set on a damp towel, so it stays put while one hand pours and the other whisks, and the depth keeps the oil down where the whisk can reach it.

Ingredients

• 4 anchovy fillets, packed in oil, drained
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 large egg yolk, pasteurized, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, finely grated
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
• Kosher salt, to taste

Ingredient Selection

The egg is the one that matters. This dressing is eaten raw, and the FDA's guidance for exactly this dish is to use shell eggs treated to destroy Salmonella by pasteurization or another approved method, or a pasteurized egg product. Caesar dressing is named in that guidance by name. Pasteurized shell eggs are sold in most supermarkets and behave identically here. If you cannot find them, a pasteurized yolk product works, and if you have neither, this is a recipe to postpone rather than improvise.

Buy anchovies packed in oil in a jar rather than a flat tin if you can, because you will use four fillets and the rest keep far better submerged under their own oil with a lid on. Four fillets sounds like a lot and is not; they disappear completely. Anchovy paste in a tube is a legitimate substitute at about a teaspoon for four fillets, though it is saltier and less clean-tasting.

Use a real wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano and grate it yourself. Pre-grated cheese is coated with an anti-caking starch that will not dissolve into an oil emulsion, so it stays gritty no matter how long you whisk. Grate it fine, on the smallest holes you have.

Extra virgin olive oil is traditional and it is also the one risk in the recipe. Whisking drives an aggressive oil's bitterness forward, so a very peppery Tuscan oil can turn the dressing harsh. If yours is assertive, cut it half and half with a neutral oil rather than fighting it.

Method

Mise en Place

1. Bring the yolk to room temperature and grate the cheese: Take the egg out 15 to 20 minutes ahead, because a cold yolk emulsifies reluctantly. Grate the Parmigiano-Reggiano fine and measure the oil into something you can pour from slowly.

Build the Paste

1. Pound the anchovy and garlic to a smooth paste: Put the garlic cloves in the mortar with a good pinch of coarse salt and work them until they break down, then add the anchovies and keep going until the whole thing is a uniform paste with no visible fibers. The salt is doing real work as an abrasive here, and this takes longer than you expect.

Build the Emulsion

1. Whisk the yolk, lemon juice, mustard and Worcestershire into the paste: Scrape the paste into the bowl, add the yolk, lemon juice, Dijon and Worcestershire, and whisk for about 30 seconds until the mixture is uniform and slightly thickened. The mustard is an emulsifier as much as a seasoning, which is why it goes in now rather than at the end.
2. Add the oil drop by drop at first: Pour far slower than feels reasonable while whisking without stopping, until the mixture stops looking like liquid and starts looking like sauce. This is where the emulsion is actually made, and rushing it is why Caesar dressing breaks.
3. Speed up once it holds: When it has visibly thickened and no longer threatens to separate, add the rest of the oil in a thin steady stream, still whisking continuously.

Finish

1. Whisk in the cheese and pepper, then taste for salt: Add the grated cheese and black pepper and whisk just until smooth. Taste before adding any salt at all, because the anchovies, the cheese and the Worcestershire have already brought a great deal. Thin with a teaspoon of water at a time if you want it looser for delicate leaves.

Serving and Application

Romaine hearts, torn rather than chopped, and less dressing than you think. The classic error is drowning it: the leaves should be glossed, not swimming, and you should still be able to hear them. Beyond salad it works as a dip for raw vegetables, a sauce for grilled chicken or steak, and a spread on a sandwich where you would otherwise reach for mayonnaise.

Popular Variations

• Egg-free Caesar: Replace the yolk with 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, which is already an emulsion and stabilizes the dressing. This sidesteps the raw-egg question entirely and is the version most restaurants serve.
• Anchovy-free: Substitute an extra teaspoon of Worcestershire, which contains anchovy itself and carries some of the same savory depth. Not identical, and worth knowing it is still not vegetarian.
• Pecorino Romano: Swap the Parmigiano for Pecorino Romano for a sharper, saltier, sheep's-milk version. Cut the added salt accordingly.
• Lighter, thinner dressing: Cut the olive oil to 1/3 cup and add a tablespoon of water. Less rich and easier on tender leaves.

Make Ahead, Storage and Reheating

This contains raw egg yolk and is never heated, so it is perishable from the moment it is made. Get it into a clean airtight container and into the refrigerator at 40F or below straight away.

The raw yolk is what limits its life. Federal cold-storage guidance gives raw egg yolks 2 to 4 days refrigerated, so treat the batch the same way and use it inside that window rather than the week you would give a cooked dressing. The egg-free variation above keeps noticeably longer. It does not freeze; the emulsion separates on thawing and does not come back.

It will thicken and may separate slightly in the cold. Let it sit out for a few minutes and whisk it back together, and if it has genuinely broken, whisk the broken dressing a little at a time into a fresh teaspoon of mustard in a clean bowl.

History

The salad is better documented than most restaurant origin stories, and the dressing as sold in bottles is a long way from it. The generally accepted account credits Caesar Cardini, an Italian restaurateur working in Tijuana during Prohibition, when Americans crossed the border to drink and eat. The dish is said to have been improvised from what was left in the kitchen on a busy weekend and finished tableside.

What is worth flagging is that the anchovy is contested even in the original. Cardini's daughter maintained her father used no anchovy fillets at all, and that the savory note came from the Worcestershire, which contains anchovy in it already. A rival claim credits his brother Alex with adding them. Either way, the dressing you will be served almost anywhere today includes them, and this recipe does too.

The coddled egg in the original is the other detail that has drifted. A raw or barely warmed yolk was unremarkable in the 1920s and is a different calculation now, which is why the note above exists.

Nutrition

An estimate, calculated ingredient by ingredient from USDA FoodData Central entries by hand rather than measured in a lab. The recipe makes about 1 cup, and the figures are given per 2 tablespoons, a realistic amount of dressing on a salad rather than a share of the batch.

References

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration: What You Need to Know About Egg Safety, which names Caesar dressing and advises pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized egg products
• FoodSafety.gov: Cold Food Storage Chart, on refrigerating at 40F or below and the 2 to 4 day limit on raw egg yolks

Related Guides

This is the same hand-built egg-yolk emulsion as Mayonnaise and Aioli, and if you have made that, you have already done the hard part of this. The mortar work here is the same technique the traditional egg-free aioli on that page depends on. For the other side of the salad-dressing family, Ranch Dressing gets its body from dairy rather than from a yolk and oil.

Thank You

Thanks for making the real version, anchovies and all. If you have been avoiding them, make this once and then tell me whether you could taste fish, because almost nobody can. Drop me a note through the contact page. More dressings are on the way, so say which one you want next.

Chef Alan
Wine Drop Cookery
35 years, Six Four Diamond Awards