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Mrs. Hotchkin's Boiled Salad Dressing
2 eggs; 2 tablespoonfuls sugar; 8 tablespoonfuls vinegar, or if very sour, 6 of vinegar and cold water; 1/2 teaspoonful salt; 1/2 saltspoonful paprika; 1 level teaspoonful dry mustard; 1 large tablespoonful butter; 1/4 to 1/2 cupful rich cream, either sweet or sour. Mix the dry ingredients--sugar, salt, mustard, and paprika together, rubbing the mustard well into the sugar; this is the easiest and quickest way of blending the mustard thoroughly. Beat the egg, using a Dover egg-beater; add the seasoned sugar and the vinegar, still beating it. Pour the mixture into a double boiler with the water in the lower pan boiling briskly; add the butter and still beat with the egg-beater until it is of the consistency of a boiled custard, taking care that it does not cook until it separates, and beating and stirring it down from the sides of the boiler that all parts of it may get beaten smooth. Turn out, and when cool put in the refrigerator, and when thoroughly chilled, or just before serving, add the cream, beating well. If kept in the refrigerator in a glass or other covered jar it will keep for two weeks. If the flavor of onion is liked, peel a small one and put in when the dressing is put on to cook, and take it out as soon as done. This gives a slight, but undefinable flavor, which is just enough.
A boiled dressing of the pre-mayonnaise sort: eggs, vinegar and mustard thickened over water, then loosened with cream at the last moment. It is closer to a savory custard than to a vinaigrette, and it behaves like one.
- The hinge: heat controlThe egg must set into a custard without scrambling. Keep the water below the pan at a bare simmer rather than the "briskly boiling" of the original, and pull the pan the moment the mixture coats a spoon, around 175F. Once it separates it will not come back.
- A saltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the paprika here is about 1/8 teaspoon. Use sweet paprika; hot Hungarian or smoked paprika will dominate.
- Dover egg-beaterA hand-crank rotary beater. A balloon whisk does the same job, and a small immersion blender used in short bursts off the heat will smooth out any early graininess.
- The vinegarEight tablespoonfuls is half a cup, which is a lot of acid by modern taste; household vinegars of the period were not standardized and their strength varied. Start with the 6-tablespoon version cut with water and adjust after chilling.
- Rubbing mustard into sugarDry mustard clumps when dropped straight into liquid. Working it into the sugar first is still the fastest way to disperse it.
- Cream at the endAdding the cream only after the base is cold keeps it from thinning or breaking in the heat. The recipe allows either sweet or sour cream: sour gives the tangier result, heavy cream a milder one, closer to a dressing you would spoon over shredded cabbage or cold chicken.
- KeepingTwo weeks is optimistic for an egg-and-dairy dressing by current refrigeration practice. Treat it as a four- or five-day keeper in a covered jar, and stir before each use.
- YieldAbout a cup and a third to a cup and two-thirds depending on how much cream is added, enough to dress a large salad for six to eight.