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For Dressing (Tablespoonfuls melted Crisco) (II)
5 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 1 teaspoonful mustard 1 teaspoonful salt 2 teaspoonfuls sugar 2 yolks of eggs 3/4 cupful cream or milk 1/4 cupful vinegar
This is a proportion list for a cooked ("boiled") salad dressing, the standard alternative to mayonnaise in American households before bottled dressings. The book prints the ingredients only, so the method has to be supplied from period practice for this style of dressing.
- The missing methodDressings of this composition were whisked together and cooked in a double boiler over simmering water until they thickened to the consistency of thin custard, then cooled. Direct heat curdles the yolks; the water bath is the whole point of the technique.
- Cook the yolksWith two yolks and no cooking step written down, the safe practice is to bring the mixture to 160F while whisking, which is also the point at which it thickens. A dressing of this kind was never meant to be served raw.
- CriscoCrisco is still sold and is the ingredient the book exists to promote. Melted shortening sets firm as the dressing chills, so this dressing thickens more than an oil-based one; a neutral oil gives a pourable result if that is what you want.
- Mustard"Mustard" in an ingredient list of this period usually means dry mustard powder rather than prepared jarred mustard, though the book does not specify. A teaspoon of powder is assertive; prepared mustard would leave the dressing milder and thinner.
- Vinegar strengthPeriod cider and white vinegars ran roughly 4 to 5 percent acid, close to modern supermarket vinegar. A quarter cup against three-quarters cup of cream is a sharp dressing by current taste; add it gradually at the end and stop when it suits you.
- Cream or milk"Cream" here was probably something in the range of today's half-and-half to light cream, though period cream was not graded consistently. Whole milk works but gives a looser dressing and is more prone to breaking as the acid goes in.
- Yield and keepingAbout a cup and a half, enough for a large bowl of potato, cabbage or chicken salad serving six to eight. Refrigerate in a covered jar and use within three or four days; it will stiffen when cold and needs stirring before use.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, and its recipes use Crisco throughout -- the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening the company introduced in 1911. Cooked dressings like this one predate the book by decades: before reliable commercial mayonnaise, a household that wanted a creamy salad dressing thickened eggs and vinegar with milk over hot water, which was cheaper than beating a cup of oil into yolks by hand and far less likely to fail. Substituting melted Crisco for butter or oil in such a dressing is exactly the kind of demonstration the volume was built around, showing homemakers that the new fat could stand in anywhere lard or butter once did. The result belongs to the same family as the boiled dressings still used on old-fashioned coleslaw and potato salad in the American Midwest and Pennsylvania.