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French Dressing
1 tablespoonful of vinegar, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, A dash of cayenne, 3 tablespoonfuls of olive oil, ¼ teaspoonful of black pepper.
Put the salt and pepper in a bowl and add gradually the oil. Mix in slowly the vinegar, stirring rapidly all the while. As soon as you have a perfect emulsion, that is, the dressing is well blended (the oil and vinegar), it is ready to use, and should be used at once. Many persons think French dressing is simply a mixture of oil and vinegar, and mix in the most careless way, but it should be just as carefully made as Mayonnaise, so that when you pour it over the lettuce it will have a thick white appearance.
Tarragon vinegar may be used in place of plain vinegar. Onion juice or a little garlic may also be added.
A classic 3:1 oil-to-vinegar vinaigrette, whisked to a temporary emulsion. The whole point of the recipe is the beating, not the ingredient list.
- The hingeAdd the vinegar to the seasoned oil in a thin stream while whisking hard and without stopping. Dumping it in at once gives you oil floating on acid, which is exactly what the writer is complaining about.
- QuantitiesThree tablespoons oil to one of vinegar, half a teaspoon salt, a quarter teaspoon black pepper, cayenne to taste. That is enough to dress a head of lettuce for two to three people; scale up in the same ratio.
- Salt firstSalt dissolves in vinegar, not in oil. Whisking the salt into the oil as written leaves it gritty, so it is worth dissolving the salt and pepper in the vinegar before the two are combined.
- "Thick white appearance"That pale, opaque look is the sign the emulsion has taken. It is unstable and will separate within a few minutes, which is why the recipe insists on using it at once.
- Vinegar strengthVinegars varied in strength, and the recipe gives no indication of which kind is meant. If a modern wine vinegar (typically 5 to 6 percent acidity) bites, taste and add a little more oil.
- Olive oilUse a mild extra-virgin or a light olive oil. A strongly bitter, peppery modern oil will dominate a dressing this simple and fight with the cayenne.
- VariationsTarragon vinegar, onion juice or a smear of crushed garlic all work as suggested. Grate the garlic to a paste with the salt rather than chopping it, or you get hot bites in an otherwise smooth dressing.
- Making it holdWhisking in a scant quarter teaspoon of mustard, or shaking everything in a sealed jar, gives a longer-lived emulsion than the bowl-and-spoon method here.
French dressing in American cookbooks of this period means what would now be called a vinaigrette: oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, beaten together and served immediately. The sweetened, tomato-tinted orange bottle sold under the same name in the United States is a twentieth-century development that inherited the name from this kind of dressing -- a descendant rather than the same thing. The author's remark about cooks who "mix in the most careless way" may reflect a wider turn-of-the-century preoccupation with salads as a mark of refined, French-influenced cooking, in a country where boiled vegetables still dominated the table. Vegetable cookery books of the era often devoted a whole chapter to salads and dressings for precisely that reason: the raw salad was the new, faintly continental thing, and the dressing was where a cook could show skill.