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Cream Salad Dressing
1½ teaspoon salt. 1/2 tablespoon mustard. 1 tablespoon sugar. 1 egg slightly beaten. 2½ tablespoons melted butter. 3/4 cup cream. 4 tablespoons vinegar.
PROCESS: Mix ingredients in the order given, adding vinegar very slowly, beating constantly. Cook in double boiler until mixture thickens; continue beating, strain at once and chill.
A boiled dressing of the pre-mayonnaise school: egg and cream thickened over water rather than emulsified with oil. It comes together in a few minutes and the only real risk is scrambling it.
- Mustard means dry mustardIn 1900s American cookbooks an unqualified "mustard" in a dressing is powdered mustard, not prepared. Half a tablespoon of dry English or Colman's is right; if you substitute prepared mustard, use double and expect a sharper, more vinegary result.
- CreamThe recipe says only "cream." Heavy or whipping cream gives the thickest, most stable result; period "cream" was often what we would now call light cream, which thickens more thinly and is likelier to curdle against the vinegar.
- VinegarHousehold vinegar of the period varied in strength, but four tablespoons against three-quarters of a cup of cream is a workable measure with modern 5% bottled vinegar. Add it in a thin stream while beating, as the recipe directs; dumped in at once it will clot the egg and cream.
- The hinge: temperature, not timeOver simmering water, take the mixture to about 170-180F, when it coats a spoon. Above roughly 185F the egg sets in grains and the dressing breaks. Keep the water below a hard boil and the bowl off the water's surface.
- Strain at onceThis is not fussiness. Straining while hot removes any bits of set egg and stops the residual heat from cooking the dressing further in the pan. Pour it through a fine sieve into a cold bowl.
- ChillingIt thickens noticeably as it cools, so pull it while still pourable. Chill until cold; if it sets too stiff, slacken with a spoonful of cream.
- Yield and useRoughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups, enough for a large bowl of dressed greens or several cups of potato, cabbage or chicken salad. Keep it covered and cold and use within three or four days.
Boiled or cooked dressings like this one were common in American home cooking before jarred mayonnaise became a supermarket staple in the 1910s and 1920s. Eggs, cream, vinegar and a little butter thicken with gentle heat, which makes for a more forgiving job than holding a slow oil emulsion together. The result is tangier and sweeter than mayonnaise, and cooked dressings turn up throughout period cookbooks on cabbage, potatoes and cold fowl.