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Lettuce Dressing (Yolks of eggs teacup milk)
Yolks of 4 eggs. 1 teacup milk. 1 teacup vinegar. 4 tablespoonfuls oil or melted butter.
After mixing all well together, except the vinegar, let it come to a boil. When cold, beat well, add the vinegar, salt, pepper, and made mustard to suit the taste. Keep corked in a bottle.--Mrs. A. M. D.
This is a boiled dressing — a cooked egg custard soured with vinegar — the standard salad sauce in American households before bottled mayonnaise. It behaves like a thin hollandaise and fails in the same way, so gentle heat is everything.
- Do not literally boil itFour yolks in a cup of milk will curdle well below boiling. Cook it in a double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the spoon at around 170-180F, then pull it off. "Let it come to a boil" in books of this period is often best read as the first thickening at the edge rather than a rolling boil.
- TeacupA teacup in Victorian American recipe books is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup (6 fl oz), though the vessels were not standardised. The recipe calls for equal measures of milk and vinegar, which gives a very sharp dressing; add the vinegar gradually and stop when it tastes right.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household cider vinegar was variable in strength compared with today's standardised 5 percent. Start with half the vinegar, taste, and add more.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard from a jar, not dry mustard powder. A teaspoon of a plain yellow or Dijon-style mustard is about right for this quantity.
- Oil or melted butterButter sets firm when cold and will give a dressing that needs stirring or a moment at room temperature before use. A neutral oil keeps it pourable.
- Add the vinegar coldThe instruction to cool the base first, beat it, then add the acid is not fussiness — hot custard plus vinegar curdles on contact.
- Storage"Keep corked in a bottle" assumes a household without refrigeration. Refrigerate it in a sealed jar and use within three or four days.
- YieldAbout a pint -- enough for several large bowls of lettuce. Halve it unless you are feeding a crowd.
Boiled dressing was a common salad sauce in American kitchens from the mid-1800s onward, and it persisted alongside mayonnaise into the twentieth century. Cooking the yolks with milk and thinning with vinegar produced something that could be bottled and kept in the cool, which mattered in a household with no refrigeration. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877) was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives -- the "Mrs. A. M. D." signature here is typical of the book's method, which collected many versions of the same dish rather than settling on one. "Made mustard" is an old distinction, still current in Britain, between mustard already mixed with liquid and the dry powder sold for the cook to mix herself.