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Cheese Dressing
Mix 2 tablespoons mayonnaise dressing with 2 tablespoons cream cheese. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon table sauce 1/2 teaspoon paprika and add very slowly 1/4 cup salad oil, beating with egg beater until very thick. Add slowly 1 1/2 tablespoons vinegar. Keep in cool place till ready to serve. Cream cheese with Roquefort flavor is desirable in both the above recipes, but the usual cottage or cream cheese may be used if preferred.
A thick emulsified cheese dressing built on mayonnaise as a base, in the manner of the cookery-school kitchens of the 1920s. Two terms need translating and one step decides whether it works.
- Add the oil slowly, and mean itThe mayonnaise and cheese are the emulsifier here; the quarter cup of oil must go in a thread at a time while the beater runs, or the dressing breaks into a greasy slick. The vinegar goes in only after the mixture is stiff, since acid added early thins the emulsion and makes it far harder to thicken.
- "Table sauce"A bottled commercial condiment of the period, most likely Worcestershire or a similar spiced brown sauce (A-1, Escoffier and the like). Half a teaspoon of Worcestershire is a reasonable modern reading.
- Cream cheese, then and nowAt the time this meant a soft fresh cheese, looser than the stabilized foil-wrapped bricks sold now. Modern block cream cheese should be at room temperature and beaten smooth before the mayonnaise goes in, or it will stay in lumps.
- "Roquefort flavor" cheeseA cream cheese sold ready-blended with blue cheese. Crumbled Roquefort, Gorgonzola or Stilton mashed into the cream cheese gives the same effect; blue cheese is salty, so add the salt cautiously and taste.
- Egg beaterA hand-cranked rotary beater. A balloon whisk or hand mixer does the same job; the quantity is small, so use the smallest bowl that will hold it.
- Salad oilA neutral oil, in that era most often cottonseed or corn. Any bland vegetable oil suits; olive oil will dominate the cheese.
- Yield and keepingAbout two-thirds of a cup, enough for a head of lettuce or four to six salad portions. Refrigerate in a covered jar and use within three or four days; it stiffens when cold and needs stirring before serving.
This comes from a small book of luncheon and supper cookery of the sort produced in quantity in the early twentieth century, when the midday ladies' luncheon and the informal evening supper were occasions a hostess was likely to cook for herself. Salad had become the centerpiece of such a meal, and dressings multiplied accordingly: the base of bottled or homemade mayonnaise, enriched with cheese, chili sauce, chopped pickle or whipped cream, gave a cook a dozen "different" dressings from one foundation. Jarred blue-cheese spreads were reaching American grocers in this period, putting a French cheese flavor within reach of households that would never have bought the wheel. The instruction to "keep in a cool place" rather than the refrigerator suggests that mechanical refrigeration was not yet universal in home kitchens when the book was written.