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Curry Dressing
3/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon curry powder 1/4 teaspoon pepper 5 tablespoons olive oil 3 tablespoons vinegar Mix ingredients in order given and stir until well blended. Cream Dressing I 1/4 tablespoon salt 1/2 tablespoon mustard 3/4 tablespoon sugar 1 egg slightly beaten 2 1/2 tablespoons melted butter 3/4 cup cream 1/4 cup vinegar Mix ingredients in order given, adding vinegar very slowly. Cook over boiling water, stirring constantly until mixture thickens, strain and cool.
A plain curry vinaigrette, followed by a cooked boiled-cream dressing of the sort that stood in for mayonnaise before electric mixers. Both are quick; the cooked one is the fussier of the two.
- Ratio, and how to fix itFive tablespoons oil to three of vinegar is a sharp 5:3 dressing, more acidic than the 3:1 or 4:1 vinaigrettes common in books of the period. If your vinegar is a strong 6 or 7 percent, add a little more oil rather than water.
- Curry powder wants a momentRaw curry powder tastes dusty in a cold dressing. Stir the powder into the oil first and let it sit ten minutes before the vinegar goes in, or warm a spoonful of the oil with the powder and cool it.
- Vinegar in the originalUnspecified vinegar in a book of this period most likely means cider, plain white, or white wine vinegar, not balsamic or rice vinegar. Cider vinegar suits the curry best.
- YieldThe curry dressing makes about half a cup, enough for a salad for four. It separates on standing; shake or whisk again at the table.
- The cream dressing is a custardCook it in a double boiler or a bowl set over simmering water, never directly on the burner, and keep stirring. Direct heat will scramble the egg before the mixture thickens.
- Add the vinegar slowly, and mean itThis is the hinge of the second dressing. Acid dumped into egg and cream curdles it on contact; dribble it in while whisking, and the strain at the end is your insurance.
- Cream then and nowCream in this period was not standardized and was generally thinner than modern heavy cream. Half-and-half or light cream gives a closer result than heavy cream, which makes the dressing very rich and thick when chilled.
- Doneness and storageIt is done when it coats a spoon, roughly 170 to 175F; it thickens further as it cools. Keep it covered in the refrigerator and use within three days.
- MustardHalf a tablespoon of mustard here most likely means dry mustard powder. Prepared mustard is wetter and milder; the usual substitution is about three times as much.
Cooked or "boiled" dressings like the second of these were the American household answer to mayonnaise: eggs, cream or milk, vinegar and mustard thickened over hot water, cheaper than a cup of olive oil and far less likely to break in an unrefrigerated kitchen. They dressed cabbage, potato and chicken salads for decades and survive in the sweet-sour dressings of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking and in commercial salad dressing sold alongside mayonnaise. The curry vinaigrette belongs to a different current, the steady flow of Anglo-Indian seasonings into British and American cookery through the nineteenth century, by which point commercial curry powder was an ordinary grocery item and cooks used it to lift a plain oil-and-vinegar dressing much as they would paprika or celery seed.