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Nut Salad Dressing
1 round tablespoon peanut butter 1/2 cup water 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1/4 cup thick cream Rub the nut butter smooth with the water, add the salt, and cook till the mixture thickens. Cool, and add the lemon juice. Whip the cream, and fold it into the dressing.
The two preceding dressings, also, may be mixed with whipped cream when using.
A cooked peanut dressing lightened with whipped cream, from the sanitarium tradition of nut-based salad dressings. It comes together in a few minutes, and the only real technique is keeping the emulsion smooth.
- A round tablespoonThat means a rounded or heaped spoonful, not a level one — roughly 20-25 g of peanut butter. Err on the generous side; the water dilutes it considerably.
- The peanut butter to useNut butter of this period was typically little more than ground peanuts. Use a natural grind with no added sugar or hydrogenated oil, or the dressing will taste of candy and set up oddly.
- Rub it smooth firstWork the water into the nut butter a little at a time to a loose, lump-free cream before any heat goes under it. Adding all the water at once leaves grainy specks that never disperse.
- Cooking itLow heat and constant stirring; the recipe says only "cook till the mixture thickens," which will likely take a few minutes. Pull it as soon as it coats the spoon, since it tightens further on cooling.
- Lemon after coolingThe recipe is explicit that the mixture is cooled before the acid goes in, which will at least preserve the fresh taste of the juice.
- Thick creamModern heavy or whipping cream is the nearest equivalent. Whip only to soft peaks so it folds in without deflating.
- Yield and keepingAbout one cup once the whipped cream is folded in. Serve soon after mixing; whipped volume collapses on standing.
- The cross-referenceThe closing line points back to two dressings printed just before this one in the book, not to anything in this recipe.
Good Food and How to Prepare It belongs to the vegetarian household cookery that grew out of the American health-reform movement, where nut butters did the work that meat fat and egg yolks did elsewhere. Ground peanut pastes were patented as early as the 1880s, and the Battle Creek Sanitarium kitchens of the 1890s did much to popularise nut butters; the sanitarium cookbooks that followed pressed them into service far beyond the sandwich — as a soup base, a gravy thickener, and, as here, the fatty backbone of a salad dressing built without oil or raw egg. Cooking the thinned nut butter briefly appears to be what gives the dressing body: the peanut solids absorb water and thicken, standing in for the emulsified oil of a mayonnaise. The whipped cream folded in at the end adds richness, and the author extends the same option to the neighbouring dressings.