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Salad Dressing (Beat two eggs Add butter size)
Beat two eggs. Add butter size of half an egg. 1/2 teaspoonful mustard rubbed smooth in a little water. 4 tablespoonfuls vinegar. 1/2 teacupful boiling water.
Set it in a bowl on top of the tea-kettle and stir until as thick as cream.--Mrs. W. H. M.
A boiled salad dressing of the kind that preceded oil-based mayonnaise in most American kitchens — thickened with egg over steam rather than emulsified with oil. A few of the measures need translating before it will work.
- The kettle is your double boiler"Set it in a bowl on top of the tea-kettle" means suspending the bowl over steam from the spout or open mouth of a kettle on the range. Use a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, with the bowl clear of the water itself.
- Butter the size of half an eggRoughly 1 tablespoon (about 1/2 oz), though period tables vary: "butter the size of an egg" is given as anything from 2 tablespoons to a scant 1/4 cup. Nineteenth-century books commonly sized butter against eggs, walnuts and hickory nuts.
- TeacupfulA nineteenth-century teacup is smaller than a modern cup, usually reckoned somewhere between 4 and 6 fluid ounces. Half a teacupful is therefore roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup of boiling water.
- Mustard means dry powderNot prepared table mustard. English mustard powder rubbed smooth with a little cold water is what the recipe intends, and letting the paste stand ten minutes develops its heat.
- The hinge: low, steady heatThe mixture must thicken, not scramble. Stir continuously and pull the bowl off the moment it coats the spoon like cream — around 170F. Curdled egg will not smooth out again, though a quick blitz in a blender can rescue a slightly grainy batch.
- Add the boiling water graduallyPouring it in all at once onto beaten egg sets the egg immediately. Trickle it in while whisking, then set the bowl over the steam.
- Seasoning is missingThere is no salt or sugar here, and the four tablespoons of vinegar make a sharp dressing by modern taste. A teaspoon of sugar and a good pinch of salt bring it into line without changing its character.
- Yield and keepingAbout a cup, enough for a large bowl of cold slaw, potato salad or chicken salad. It thickens further as it cools; refrigerate and use within three or four days, thinning with a spoonful of cream if needed.
Boiled dressings like this one were a common everyday alternative to mayonnaise in nineteenth-century American households, and they appear repeatedly in Southern community collections, which characteristically credited contributions to named housekeepers or their initials — as with the "Mrs. W. H. M." here. The appeal was practical: an egg-and-vinegar dressing thickened over heat was reckoned to keep better than a raw-egg emulsion, and it needs no salad oil. Cooked dressings of this type are generally regarded as the forerunners of the bottled "salad dressing" still sold alongside mayonnaise, and they remain a traditional binder for coleslaw and potato salad in much of the country.