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Sour Cream Dressings
When cream is soured, but not old enough to be strong (although it may be very thick), it may be used in several ways for dressing: (1.) Rub smooth the yolks of four hardboiled eggs, adding gradually fiye tablespoons of sour, thick cream. Thin and flavour this with lemon or wild orange juice or tarragon vinegar. (2.) Mix smooth in a cup of sour cream a tablespoon of flour. Have heating three tablespoons of lemon juice or vinegar, and two of butter, one-half teaspoon each of sugar and mustard, and pinch of cayenne or paprika. Mix cream and flour in this and cook three minutes, stirring the while. Just before removing from fire add the stiff whipped whites of two eggs. Remove and cool. (3.) Thick, fresh, sour cream may be used uncooked, with lemon juice or a thick syrup or cordial flavouring. Just before serving the whipped whites of two eggs may be added, but this cannot stand long and the egg is not necessary.
Three dressings built on the same premise: that cream on hand will sour on its own and can be caught at the right moment. That premise no longer holds in a modern kitchen, and it governs everything else here.
- Do not sour your own creamThese directions assume raw or lightly handled farm cream, whose native lactic bacteria acidify it before spoilage organisms take hold. Pasteurized cream lacks a reliable native culture and is as likely to spoil as to sour. Use commercial cultured sour cream or crème fraîche, thick and fresh-tasting, for all three versions.
- "Thick, fresh, sour"The author is describing cream at the stage where it is tart and spoonable but not yet sharp or bitter. Crème fraîche matches it most closely in fat and flavour; American sour cream is thinner and more acidic, so go easier on the lemon juice.
- Wild orange juiceAlmost certainly the naturalized sour orange of Florida and the Gulf coast, Citrus × aurantium. Seville orange juice is the direct substitute; failing that, two parts orange juice to one part lemon.
- Version 2 needs gentle heatA cup of soured cream thickened with a tablespoon of flour will break if it boils. Warm the acid, butter and seasonings, stir in the cream-flour slurry, and hold it just below a simmer for the three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste.
- The whipped whites are rawFolded in "just before removing from fire" and then cooled, the whites never reach a temperature that pasteurizes them; in version 3 they are not heated at all. Use pasteurized-in-shell eggs, or leave them out — the author admits in the third variation that the egg is not necessary.
- Version 1 is a mayonnaise substituteFour hard-boiled yolks rubbed smooth with five tablespoons of cream give a stiff paste; thin it with the acid until it pours. Push the yolks through a sieve rather than mashing them, or the dressing will stay grainy.
- "A thick syrup or cordial"Probably a fruit syrup — raspberry, currant, quince — or a sweet fruit liqueur, used to sweeten and flavour at once. The recipe gives no quantity; add to taste.
- YieldEach version makes roughly a cup. Version 3 with the whites folded in must go to the table at once; the author says it cannot stand long.
Sour cream dressings belong to the era before bottled mayonnaise, when farm kitchens had cream in various stages of turning and no reason to waste any of it. Cream left standing in a cool dairy soured predictably from its own lactic bacteria, and cooks distinguished soured cream from cream old enough to be strong. The second version here is a classic boiled dressing, thickened with flour and sharpened with mustard and vinegar, the standard American salad sauce of the late nineteenth century and considerably more stable than an emulsion of oil and egg. Its appearance in a book of fruit recipes reflects a period enthusiasm for fruit salads dressed in something tart and creamy rather than oily.