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Lemon Dressing
Take 1 cupful of water, 1 tablespoonful of rice flour, the juice of 1 lemon, and a very little of the grated rind. Sweeten to taste; if to be used with very sweet fruits only a little sugar is best, but for acid fruits more sweetening will be needed. Boil for a few minutes, and allow it to get very cold before using.
A cooked, starch-thickened dressing for fruit salads, from the era when boiled dressings were preferred over oil-based ones. It is essentially a thin lemon sauce, and the only technical demand is cooking the starch through.
- Cook the starch outRice flour needs to reach a full boil and hold it for two to three minutes, whisking, or the dressing tastes chalky and will thin out again as it stands. Combine the rice flour with a little of the cold water to a smooth slurry first, then add the rest, or you will get lumps.
- Rice flour and substitutesUse plain white rice flour rather than glutinous (sweet) rice flour, which behaves differently and gives a stickier, less clean-setting result. One tablespoon of rice flour to a cup of water gives a pourable sauce; if substituting cornstarch, roughly 2 teaspoons should give similar body.
- Lemon at the endThe recipe boils the juice with the water and flour. Acid does weaken starch thickening, so if the sauce comes out thin you can instead boil the starch first and stir the juice in off the heat, which also keeps the flavour fresher. A medium lemon yields roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons of juice.
- Grated rind"A very little" means about a quarter teaspoon of finely grated zest, yellow part only. Any white pith turns the dressing bitter as it sits.
- SweeteningStart with 2 tablespoons of sugar for tart fruits such as rhubarb, gooseberries or citrus, and 1 tablespoon or less for melon, banana or ripe berries. Taste while warm, then again cold, since chilling mutes sweetness.
- ChillingIt thickens noticeably as it cools, so judge the consistency cold rather than hot. Cover the surface with plastic wrap to prevent a skin, and give it at least two hours in the refrigerator.
- Yield and keepingMakes about a cup, enough to dress fruit for four to six. It should keep a few days refrigerated; whisk or thin with a spoonful of water if it sets too stiff.
Boiled dressings like this one belong to a strain of late nineteenth and early twentieth century cookery that treated oil-and-vinegar dressings and mayonnaise with some suspicion, and cooked dressings thickened with flour, cornstarch, arrowroot or egg are common in household manuals of the period. Rice flour was valued as a bland, very smooth thickener, and it appears often in the fruit sauces and blancmanges of the same books. Dressing sweet fruit with a sweetened lemon sauce rather than a savoury one reflects the period's habit of placing fruit salads somewhere between a salad course and a dessert.