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Celery Dressing
One teaspoonful of made mustard.
One teacup vinegar.
One saltspoonful salt.
One cup fresh nice cream.
Put ingredients on the fire and boil until proper consistency. Serve when cold.
Two eggs.
A boiled dressing of the type that filled American cookbooks before bottled mayonnaise. Note that the eggs are listed last, almost as an afterthought, but they are what thickens it.
- Read the ingredient list backwardsThe two eggs at the end are the thickener. Beat them with the cream before anything meets heat, or you will be fishing curds out of hot vinegar.
- "Boil" is not literalEgg and cream set at about 160-170F and curdle above that. Cook it in a double boiler or over the lowest possible heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the spoon. "Proper consistency" is roughly that of pouring custard; it firms further as it chills.
- Teacup and saltspoonA teacup in this period is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup (6 fl oz), though the measure was never standardised; a saltspoonful is generally taken as 1/4 teaspoon. The recipe distinguishes a 'teacup' of vinegar from a 'cup' of cream, which suggests the cream measure is the larger one, but that is an inference rather than something the text states.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar then was far less uniform than today's 5 percent product, and could run weaker or stronger. If you read the teacup as three-quarters of a cup, that much modern cider vinegar against one cup of cream is very sharp; taste as you go and consider cutting part of it with water.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard means prepared wet mustard, not dry powder. A mild yellow or Dijon works; if you only have powder, use about half as much and slake it in a little of the vinegar first.
- CreamUse heavy or whipping cream. Modern light cream and half-and-half have less fat to buffer the acid and are more likely to break.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup and a half, enough to dress a large bowl of chopped celery or a celery-and-apple salad for six to eight. It keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator and thickens as it stands; loosen with a spoonful of cream.
- There is no celery in itThe name describes what it goes on, not what is in it. If you want the flavor in the dressing itself, celery seed rather than fresh stalk is the period-appropriate addition.
Boiled dressings like this one were a common American alternative to mayonnaise: cheaper, more forgiving of the cook's arm, and keeping better in a cool larder at a time when raw-egg emulsions were laborious to make and quick to break. Celery was still a comparatively expensive vegetable through much of the nineteenth century, blanched under boards or soil to keep the stalks pale and tender, and it was often served on the table in tall cut-glass vases as a display vegetable as much as a food. Recipes of this brevity assume a reader who already knows the technique and needs only the proportions.