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Dressing (Cne half cup white sugar)
Cne half cup white sugar, 2 teaspoons mustard, 1 cup vinegar, 1 egg, a little butter and salt.
This is a boiled dressing in the old style: an ingredient list with the method left to the cook, on the assumption that anyone reading it had made one before. Here is what the list assumes.
- The method the list omitsWhisk the sugar, mustard and salt together, beat in the egg, then stir in the vinegar and cook over simmering water, stirring constantly, until it thickens enough to coat a spoon. Stir the butter in off the heat.
- Never over direct heatGentle heat -- One egg in a cup of acid liquid will scramble if pushed too fast. A double boiler or a bowl over barely simmering water is the safest route; the thickening happens somewhere around 170-180F.
- Egg safetyBecause the egg is the only thickener, cook it through — 160F on an instant-read thermometer is the standard for egg mixtures. The acidity helps but does not substitute for heat.
- "Mustard" means dry mustardIn a cookbook of this vintage this is almost certainly powdered mustard, not prepared. Two teaspoons of dry English or Keen's mustard is assertive; prepared mustard would give a weaker, wetter result.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar was often cider vinegar, though strength varied and home-made vinegar was not standardised. Cider vinegar suits this best; white distilled will read sharper.
- "A little butter"Read it as one to two teaspoons, added at the end for gloss and to round the acid.
- Yield and useRoughly a cup and a half — enough for a large bowl of shredded cabbage or a potato salad. It thickens further in the refrigerator; loosen it with cream or milk before serving.
- KeepingAn egg-thickened dressing is not a preserve. Refrigerate and use within three or four days.
Boiled dressings like this one were the everyday salad sauce of North American kitchens before commercial mayonnaise became cheap and universal. They used no oil at all, relying on egg and heat for body, which made them thriftier and far more forgiving than a hand-beaten emulsion — nothing to break, and nothing to waste if it did. The sweet-sour balance here, half a cup of sugar against a cup of vinegar, is the signature of the type: it belongs to the same sweet-pickle idiom as the chow-chows and mustard pickles. The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its flour and was assembled largely from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, which accounts for the telegraphic style — a list of what to buy, on the assumption that the reader already knew what to do with it. The "Cne" in the title is probably a misreading of "One" from the original page.