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Boiled Salad Dressing
3 Tablespoonfuls Wesson Oil 1 Tablespoonful Flour 1 Tablespoonful Sugar 1 Cupful Milk, Sweet or Slightly Sour 1/2 Cupful Mild Vinegar 1 Teaspoonful Salt 1 Teaspoonful Mustard 1/8 Teaspoonful Cayenne 2 Eggs 1 Egg Stir the dry ingredients in Wesson Oil which has been put in a double boiler top. Add the milk and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture takes on the consistency of cream. Beat the egg yolks slightly, add the vinegar, pour into the first mixture and cook till thickened, stirring constantly. Chill and fold in the beaten egg whites. This dressing may be stored for some days in a cool place, if kept in a tightly covered glass jar.
A cooked, custard-based dressing from a brand cookbook, meant as a keeping substitute for mayonnaise. It works well, but the ingredient list as printed has two typographical problems worth sorting out before you start.
- The egg lineThe list gives 2 Eggs followed by a stray 1 Egg. The method uses yolks in the cooked base and beaten whites folded in at the end, so work with two whole eggs: two yolks cooked, two whites folded. The extra 1 Egg can be ignored.
- The cayenne measure"1/ Teaspoonful Cayenne" is a broken fraction; the denominator has dropped out and cannot be recovered from the page. A full teaspoon would be fierce in this quantity, so start with a small pinch and adjust after chilling.
- Wesson OilIn this period Wesson was refined cottonseed oil, sold as a bland, odourless cooking fat. Today's bottle is canola or soybean. Any neutral vegetable oil gives the same result.
- Mustard means powder"1 teaspoonful mustard" in an American cookbook of this era is dry mustard, stirred in with the flour and sugar, not prepared table mustard. Using the jarred kind will add vinegar and change the balance.
- Slightly sour milkThe recipe's alternative refers to milk soured at room temperature, which was routine when milk was unpasteurised. Pasteurised milk left to spoil is not the same thing. Use fresh whole milk, or buttermilk if you want the tang.
- The hinge: gentle heat, constant stirringEverything hangs on the double boiler. The yolk-and-vinegar addition must thicken over simmering, not boiling, water with the whisk always moving, or the acid and heat together will curdle it into scrambled egg. Pull it the moment it coats a spoon.
- The raw whitesThe whites are folded in after chilling and never see heat, and the dressing is then kept for days. Use pasteurised whites, or leave them out and accept a denser dressing.
- Storage and yield"A cool place" meant a cellar or icebox. Refrigerate, and treat a few days as the outer limit rather than a week. The quantities make something over two cups, enough for a large potato or cabbage salad.
Boiled dressing was the everyday American salad sauce before jarred mayonnaise became cheap and universal. It uses a cooked flour-and-milk base to carry a little oil and a lot of vinegar, which made it far more forgiving than a true emulsion: it would not break, it kept for days without ice, and it needed only a spoonful or two of oil at a time when oil was still an expensive grocery. Its sharp, faintly sweet flavour is the one associated with old-style coleslaw, potato salad and wilted lettuce. The recipe's appearance here is commercial as much as culinary — Snowdrift shortening and Wesson oil were both cottonseed products of the same Southern refining business, and cookbooks like this one existed to demonstrate that a cottonseed fat could do everything butter and lard did. David Wesson is generally credited with the deodorising process that made cottonseed oil palatable enough to sell under its own name, and a page like this is that process being argued for, one dressing at a time.