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German Dressing
1/2 cup thick cream 3 tablespoons vinegar 1/4 teaspoon salt Few grains pepper Beat cream until stiff, using Dover Egg-beater. Add salt, pepper, and vinegar very slowly, continuing the beating.
A three-minute dressing that depends entirely on how you add the vinegar. Everything else is a matter of translating the dairy and the equipment.
- The hinge: add the vinegar drop by dropAcid poured into whipped cream will break it into grainy curds and weeping liquid. Trickle the vinegar in while the beater is still turning, and stop the moment it looks like it may loosen.
- "Thick cream"In this period that means the heavy top cream skimmed from unhomogenised milk, high in fat. Modern heavy or whipping cream is the direct substitute; single or light cream has too little fat to whip.
- Dover Egg-beaterA hand-cranked rotary beater, the standard American kitchen tool from the 1870s onward. A balloon whisk or the whisk attachment of an electric mixer on medium does the same job.
- Beat cream coldChill the cream, bowl and beater. Cream near room temperature whips slowly and is far more likely to break when the acid goes in.
- "Stiff" is too far here"Stiff" -- The recipe says to beat the cream stiff before the vinegar goes in. If your cream breaks at that stage, it may help to stop at soft, drooping peaks instead, leaving some slack to absorb three tablespoons of liquid.
- Vinegar choiceThe recipe does not say which vinegar. Plain white or cider vinegar, sold today at about 5 percent acidity, suits it; if you use a wine vinegar, taste as you go, as sharpness varies more than the volume suggests.
- Yield and servingMakes roughly a cup, enough for a head of lettuce or a bowl of sliced cucumbers for four to six. Dress at the last moment, as a cream dressing of this kind tends to slacken and weep on standing.