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French Dressing
One and one-half teaspoons of salt, one-quarter teaspoon of pepper, six tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of vinegar, cayenne, onion juice. Rub the bowl with an onion or use three drops of onion juice; add salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar, and stir for five minutes with a piece of ice, remove ice, and beat until quite thick, keep in a cool place until ready to serve
A standard three-to-one vinaigrette with one period flourish: it is beaten with a lump of ice rather than simply whisked or shaken.
- The ice is the pointChilling while beating helps the oil break into finer droplets and hold in suspension, so the dressing thickens and stays emulsified longer. A jar shaken hard over ice, or a bowl set in an ice bath with a whisk, does much the same job; a little water from the melting ice will also thin the mixture slightly.
- Salt goes in firstThe recipe adds salt and pepper to the bowl before the oil and vinegar. Keep that order even if you switch to a jar.
- Cayenne and onion juice, unmeasuredThe original lists both in the ingredients but only quantifies the onion. Take cayenne as a pinch, no more, and onion juice as the stated three drops — grated onion pressed through a fine sieve gives it. Rubbing the bowl with a cut onion is the milder option.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegars of the period were less standardised than today's, and strength varied. Standard 5% cider or white wine vinegar works; if the result tastes flat, adjust with a few extra drops rather than reworking the ratio.
- Olive oilA robust modern extra-virgin will dominate six tablespoons against two of vinegar; use a gentle oil unless you want the peppery finish.
- It will separateThere is no mustard, egg or other stabiliser here, so the emulsion is temporary. Beat again briefly just before it goes to the table.
- YieldAbout half a cup, enough to dress a salad for four to six.
French dressing in an American cookbook of this era means what the name says: the French manner of dressing a salad with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, mixed just before serving. The sweetened, tomato-tinted orange bottled product that later claimed the name is a twentieth-century commercial development and has nothing to do with this. The instruction to rub the bowl with a cut onion rather than chop one in recurs in nineteenth-century salad writing, and is comparable to the French chapon, a crust of bread rubbed with garlic and tossed through the leaves, though a direct borrowing cannot be established. Beating a dressing with a lump of ice turns up in American household writing of the period, when ice was readily to hand in the domestic icebox.