Home › Salads and Salad Dressings › Cream Boiled Dressing
Cream Boiled Dressing
Cream 2 tablespoonfuls of butter with 1 teaspoonful of sugar, 1 of salt, 1/2 teaspoonful of mustard and a dash of cayenne. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs and put them in a double boiler; add slowly 4 tablespoonfuls of hot vinegar, beating constantly until thick. Remove from the fire, add the butter creamed with the seasoning, beat well, and when cold add a good half cupful of whipped cream.
A boiled dressing of the pre-mayonnaise school: egg yolks thickened over water with vinegar rather than emulsified with oil, then softened with butter and whipped cream. It comes together in about ten minutes, and the only real risk is heat.
- The hinge: keep the water below a simmerYolks thickened with vinegar set between about 160 and 180F. Let the lower pan boil hard and the custard will granulate; hold the water at a bare tremble and stir without stopping.
- "Mustard" means dry mustard powder"Mustard" most likely means dry mustard powder -- In American cookbooks of this period an unqualified "mustard" in a dressing is usually ground mustard flour rather than prepared jarred mustard. The recipe calls for half a teaspoonful.
- Hot vinegar, added slowlyHeating the vinegar first shortens the cooking, but poured in fast it scrambles the yolks. Warm 4 tablespoons of cider or white wine vinegar to steaming and add it a spoonful at a time, beating between additions.
- Cream the butter coldThe 2 tablespoons of butter should be soft but not melted when you work the sugar, salt, mustard and cayenne into it. Beaten into the hot custard off the heat, it both enriches and cools the mixture.
- Cool fully before the cream goes in"When cold" is doing real work: whipped cream folded into a warm base deflates and the dressing turns thin. Chill the custard to room temperature or cooler first.
- "A good half cupful"The recipe reads as half a cupful of cream already whipped, though it may equally mean the cream measured before whipping; half a cup of liquid cream whips to roughly a cup. Fold it in rather than beating, so the finished dressing stays light.
- Yield and useMakes roughly 1 to 1½ cups depending on how the cream is measured. It suits cabbage, potato, chicken and fruit salads better than delicate greens, which the cream weighs down.
- KeepingWith cooked yolk and fresh cream in it, this is best eaten fresh. Refrigerate what you do not use and finish it within a day or two; it may separate slightly and will need a quick whisk.