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Dressing for Slaw
Yolks of two eggs well beaten, one third of a teacup of vinegar, one teacupful of new milk or cream, and a teaspoonful of mixed mustard, black or cayenne pepper, salt to the taste, butter size of an egg. Stir over the fire until thick, and then pour over cabbage.
A boiled dressing of the sort that preceded bottled mayonnaise in American kitchens: eggs, vinegar and milk thickened over heat. The whole thing turns on gentle cooking.
- The hinge: low heatEgg yolks set at around 160-170F, well below a simmer. Cook the mixture in a double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat, stirring constantly, and pull it off the moment it coats the back of a spoon. Direct high heat will scramble the yolks into curds that no amount of whisking will smooth.
- TeacupA teacup in period American recipes is smaller than a modern measuring cup; figures between about 4 and 6 fl oz are usually given. Taking it as 6 fl oz, the vinegar is about 2 fl oz (4 tablespoons) and the milk about 3/4 cup; the proportions are forgiving.
- Butter size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Stir it in off the heat at the end so it emulsifies rather than separates.
- New milkFresh whole milk, not skimmed and unhomogenised. Whole milk works; cream gives a richer, more stable dressing and is the better choice if you have it.
- Mixed mustardMustard powder already mixed to a paste with water or vinegar, in other words prepared mustard. A teaspoon of Dijon or plain yellow mustard does the job.
- VinegarHomemade cider vinegar varied in strength and was often rougher than today's standardised 5 percent bottling. Add it toward the end of cooking, and taste before committing to the full amount.
- Curdling insuranceWhisking a teaspoon of flour or cornstarch into the yolks before heating stabilises the custard considerably; some later boiled dressings include flour for this reason.
- Yield and servingMakes something over a cup and a half, enough for a medium head of cabbage shredded fine. Poured on hot it wilts the cabbage slightly; cooled, it thickens and behaves more like a mayonnaise-style slaw dressing.
Cooked or "boiled" dressings like this one were widely used in American kitchens through the nineteenth century, when whipping raw oil into a stable mayonnaise was fussy work and good salad oil was expensive and prone to going rancid in a warm pantry. Milk or cream, eggs, vinegar and butter were all on hand in a farm kitchen, and the result was a tangy custard. Cabbage was the vegetable that most needed it: cheap, storable through winter in a root cellar, and dull without something sharp. The word slaw comes into English from the Dutch sla, shortened from salade, and cabbage salad is generally traced to Dutch settlement in New York. Commercial jarred mayonnaise arrived in American groceries around 1910 and gradually displaced dressings like this one, though boiled dressing survives in regional slaws and in the sweet-sour German-influenced cooking of Pennsylvania and the Midwest.