Home › Recipes › Tomato Salad Dressing
Tomato Salad Dressing
1/2 cup tomato juice 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon celery salt 1 tablespoon oil 1 teaspoon cornstarch 1/4 teaspoon salt Heat the tomato juice to boiling, and thicken it with the cornstarch, which has been stirred smooth with a little cold water. Add remaining ingredients.
A cooked, cornstarch-bound dressing with only a tablespoon of oil -- the kind of low-fat vinaigrette substitute that appeared in reform and health cookery well before commercial bottled dressings.
- Cook the starch outOnce the cornstarch slurry goes into the boiling juice, keep it at a simmer a full minute while whisking. Pulling it off too early leaves a raw, chalky starch taste that the lemon juice will not mask.
- Add the acid off heatThe recipe has the lemon juice and oil going in after the juice is thickened; off the heat is the safer reading, since prolonged boiling with acid can break down cornstarch and the dressing will thin back out on standing.
- Celery salt plus saltThe recipe calls for both, 1/2 teaspoon celery salt and 1/4 teaspoon plain salt in a half-cup base; since celery salt is part ground celery seed, the actual salt is somewhat under 3/4 teaspoon. Modern celery salt varies widely in strength; add the plain salt last, to taste.
- Tomato juicePlain canned tomato juice is closest to the original. Cocktail-style vegetable juices already carry salt, celery seed and sometimes sugar, so cut both salts and the sugar if you use one.
- Emulsion is temporaryWith one tablespoon of oil there is nothing to hold this together for long. Whisk or shake hard just before dressing the salad.
- Yield and keepingMakes a little over half a cup, enough for a salad for four. It thickens considerably when chilled -- thin with a spoonful of water or lemon juice, and use within two or three days.
- Serve coolChill before dressing greens. Warm starch-thickened dressing wilts lettuce almost immediately.