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Boiled Salad Dressing
Mix three teaspoons of sugar, one-half teaspoon of Larkin Mustard, one teaspoon of Larkin Corn Starch, one teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt. Beat the ingredients into the yolks of two eggs. Add three tablespoons of cream, either sweet or sour, one-half cup of vinegar and the beaten whites of two eggs. Cook until it thickens, stirring constantly. Remove from the stove and stir in four tablespoons of Larkin Olive Oil. This is a particularly good dressing for any one not accustomed to Mayonnaise Dressing, as a slight flavor of the oil is obtained. For use with fruits or vegetables, the amount of sugar may be changed to one's taste.
A cooked egg-and-vinegar dressing of the type that preceded jarred mayonnaise in most American kitchens. It is a thin custard, and it behaves like one.
- The hinge: gentle heatCook it in a double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat and stop the moment it coats the spoon, around 170-180F. A boil, or a hot spot on a thin pan, will scramble the eggs into grains that no whisking recovers.
- The Larkin brandsLarkin Mustard is almost certainly dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar, since it is mixed in with the sugar, corn starch and salt; the corn starch and table salt are ordinary. Substituting prepared mustard adds liquid and vinegar and will slacken the dressing.
- Add the oil off the heatThe instruction to remove the pan before stirring in the olive oil is deliberate. Oil beaten into a hot base separates; let the mixture drop below scalding, then whisk the oil in a spoonful at a time.
- Beaten whitesBeating the whites separately and adding them before cooking gives a lighter, paler dressing than a yolks-only version. Note that the recipe then calls for constant stirring, so any air they carry is largely lost in the pan.
- Vinegar strengthA half cup of vinegar to two eggs is sharp by modern taste. Household vinegar then ran about 4 to 5 percent acidity, much as now, though cider vinegar was common in American kitchens; distilled white will read harsher.
- Cream, sweet or sour"Sweet" cream means fresh unsoured cream. Today's cultured sour cream is thicker than the naturally soured household cream this recipe assumes, but works in the same quantity.
- Yield and keepingMakes something over a cup, enough for a large bowl of potato, cabbage or chicken salad. It thickens further as it chills; keep it covered in the refrigerator and use within four or five days, thinning with a little cream if needed.
Good Things to Eat was published by the Larkin Company of Buffalo, a soap manufacturer that grew into a mail-order giant by giving away premiums with its orders, and its cookbooks exist chiefly to keep Larkin-brand groceries in the reader's pantry, which is why the mustard, corn starch, salt and olive oil are all named by brand. The dressing itself is the older American style: boiled dressings, thickened with egg and often a little starch and sharpened with vinegar, were standard long before emulsified mayonnaise became a commercial staple, partly because they kept better in an unrefrigerated kitchen and partly because good salad oil was expensive and unfamiliar. The note that this suits "any one not accustomed to Mayonnaise Dressing" is telling: olive oil was still a novelty in much of the country, and four tablespoons of it, stirred in at the end, was considered a gentle introduction.