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Salad Dressing (Mix one tablespoon of melted)
Mix one tablespoon of melted butter and one of flour, add one-half teaspoon of salt, one of mustard and three of sugar, three eggs well beaten, and one cup of milk; put on fire in double boiler, stir in three-quarters cup of vinegar, cook a few minutes.
— Mrs. Lewis P. Clarke
A boiled dressing of the kind that stood in for mayonnaise in most American kitchens before commercial jars arrived — cooked, tangy, and thick enough to coat shredded cabbage or cold potatoes.
- The hinge: add the vinegar last, off the boilThe hinge: add the vinegar last -- The recipe stirs the vinegar in only after the milk and eggs are on the heat, and the order is worth keeping. Acid stirred into cold milk can curdle it; added warm, in a slow stream, with constant stirring, it thickens smoothly.
- Double boiler is not optionalThree eggs in one cup of milk is a custard, and over direct heat it will scramble before it thickens. Keep the water at a bare simmer and do not let the upper pan touch it.
- "Cook a few minutes"Stir until the dressing coats a spoon and holds a line drawn through it, roughly 5 to 8 minutes. It thickens further as it cools, so pull it while it still looks slightly loose.
- Mustard means dry mustardA teaspoon of unqualified "mustard" in a receipt of this kind is most likely powdered mustard rather than the prepared condiment. If substituting prepared mustard, about a tablespoon is the usual equivalent, and expect a milder, wetter result.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period varied in strength and was not standardised at today's 5 percent. Three-quarters of a cup is assertive; taste and consider starting with half a cup, adding the rest to taste.
- Flour and butterThe tablespoon each of butter and flour is a small roux for body. Cook them together briefly with the milk before the eggs go in if you want to lose the raw-flour taste, or whisk the flour into the sugar and dry mustard to prevent lumps.
- Yield and keepingRoughly two and a half cups of liquid go into the pan, enough for a large slaw or potato salad. Cool, cover, and refrigerate; use within a few days, cold, thinned with a little cream or milk if it sets too stiff.
Boiled dressing was the everyday salad sauce of nineteenth-century American households, and it survived in community cookbooks long after oil-and-egg mayonnaise became fashionable. The reasons were practical: eggs, milk, vinegar, sugar and mustard were all pantry staples, salad oil was expensive and often rancid by the time it reached an inland village, and a cooked dressing kept for days in a cool cellar where an emulsion of raw yolk and oil would not. The proportions here — three teaspoons of sugar against three-quarters of a cup of vinegar — make for a decidedly sour dressing, with the sugar doing little more than taking the edge off.