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Salad Dressing (Melt one tablespoon of butter)
Melt one tablespoon of butter in one cup of vinegar; put together two tablespoons of flour, one tablespoon of dry mustard, one of sugar, one-half teaspoon of salt and a little cayenne pepper, wet with vinegar and add to the vinegar and butter, stir until thick, then stir in two well beaten eggs; let boil, then cool. Thin with milk.
— Miss Henrietta Brown
Bridge Street Bridge, Catskill, Ν. Υ.
A boiled dressing of the kind that stood in for mayonnaise in most American kitchens before commercial jars appeared. It is cooked, keeps well, and is thinned to whatever consistency the salad needs.
- The hinge: temper the eggsBeat the eggs in a bowl, whisk a ladle of the hot thickened vinegar into them, then return the mixture to the pan over low heat. Adding cold eggs straight to a boiling acid base is the one way this dressing fails, and it fails as scrambled egg.
- "Let boil" means barelyOnce the eggs are in, hold it just at a bare simmer for under a minute, stirring constantly, until it coats the spoon. The flour protects the eggs somewhat, but a rolling boil will still granulate them.
- Vinegar strengthA full cup of undiluted vinegar was normal at a time when household vinegar varied in strength rather than being standardised at today's 5 percent. With modern cider or white wine vinegar the result is sharp on purpose; the milk at the end is what brings it into balance.
- Dry mustardDry mustard here means mustard powder, not prepared mustard. Colman's or any English-style powder is the right thing; it needs the liquid and a few minutes' standing to develop its heat.
- Wet with vinegarMixing the flour, mustard, sugar, salt and cayenne to a smooth slurry with two or three tablespoons of cold vinegar before it meets the hot pan is what prevents lumps. Do not skip it.
- Yield and thinningRoughly a cup and a half before thinning. It sets quite stiff when cold, closer to a paste than a pourable dressing; whisk in milk a tablespoon at a time just before serving.
- KeepingRefrigerate in a covered jar and use within four or five days. The acidity helps, but this is a cooked egg mixture and will not keep indefinitely.
- What to put it onSuits shredded cabbage, cold potatoes, sliced cold meat or a head of lettuce cut in wedges. It is too assertive for delicate greens.
Boiled dressings like this one were widely used as an American salad sauce through the nineteenth century, and they persisted in community cookbooks well after jarred mayonnaise became easy to buy. The reason is practical: a flour-and-egg dressing cooked in vinegar is stable, cheap, and does not depend on the cook's skill at emulsifying oil, which was itself a comparatively costly ingredient. The mustard, sugar and cayenne combination is close to the seasoning that underlies commercial salad dressings and much of what is now sold as coleslaw dressing. The attribution to Miss Henrietta Brown of Bridge Street is typical of the subscription cookbook, where each receipt carried its contributor's name and address as a small public credit.