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French Dressing-No.1
Rub the sides of a bowl with garlic or an onion cut in halves. Put in 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, and 1 saltspoonful of pepper; then pour in slowly 4 tablespoonfuls of olive-oil, stirring constantly. When the salt is dissolved, add 1 tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar or lemon juice. Mix thoroughly and use at once.
A classic 4:1 vinaigrette built directly in the salad bowl, with the seasoning dissolved in oil rather than in acid. It makes enough to dress a salad for four.
- SaltspoonfulAn old measure equal to about 1/4 teaspoon. So the ratio here is 1/2 teaspoon salt to a scant 1/4 teaspoon pepper.
- Order of mixingThe salt goes in before the acid, and is dissolved as the oil is poured over; the recipe gives no reason for the order. Grind the pepper fresh; pre-ground loses most of its point in a dressing this plain.
- Rubbing the bowlCut a clove of garlic and drag it firmly around a wooden bowl, which holds the oils. In glass or steel the effect is faint, so either mince a small amount of garlic into the dressing or accept a milder result.
- Tarragon vinegarOnce a staple bottled item, now easier to make than to buy: a few bruised tarragon sprigs steeped in white wine vinegar for a week. Plain white wine vinegar with a pinch of chopped tarragon is a reasonable stand-in.
- Olive oilThe olive oil commonly sold then was often milder than a peppery cold-pressed extra virgin. A grassy modern oil will dominate delicate leaves; choose accordingly.
- Use at onceThere is no emulsifier here at all, so the dressing breaks within minutes. Mix it just before the salad goes to the table and toss immediately.
- Adjusting the ratioFour parts oil to one part acid is on the rich side for current tastes; three to one is a common modern proportion, though the original balance suits butterhead lettuce and other soft leaves well.
French dressing in nineteenth-century Anglo-American cookery generally meant this: oil, acid, salt, pepper, mixed and used the moment it was made. The name distinguished it from the boiled, egg-thickened, or cream-based dressings common on Anglo-American salads. The garlic-rubbed bowl and the tarragon vinegar (the recipe also allows lemon juice) point to French practice. The sweet, tomato-tinted orange bottled product that later took over the name in the United States is a twentieth-century development and has nothing to do with this formula; the title 'No. 1' suggests the book gives more than one version, treating French dressing as a family of vinaigrettes rather than one fixed thing.