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Potato Salad Dressing
Press one boiled potato through a fine sieve. Add to it while warm, one tablespoonful of butter, and if liked, one tablespoonful of oil. Add one teaspoonful of salt and a dash of cayenne, and work in gradually the uncooked yolks of two eggs. Two hard-boiled yolks should now be added, but first press them through a fine sieve. Add gradually one tablespoonful of either plain or Tarragon vinegar. Add a half teaspoonful of onion juice, or the dish may be rubbed with a piece of onion before putting in the ingredients. When well blended put in a cold place until wanted.
— Mrs. Rorer'S Salad Dressing
1 teaspoonful of onion juice, I salt-spoonful of salt, 4 tablespoonfuls of oil, 1 teaspoonful of onion juice, I salt-spoonful of ginny pepper, 1½ salt-spoonful of white pepper, ½ tablespoonful of Tarragon vinegar. a Put the onion, pepper, salt and ginny pepper in bowl, add gradually the oil, rubbing until it dissolves. Then work in gradually the vinegar. When you have a thick, well-blended dressing, pour it at once over lettuce or cold boiled string beans and serve.
This is also nice with celery stuffed into tomatoes.
Two dressings run together here: a potato-thickened emulsion built on raw egg yolks, and a plain oil-and-vinegar dressing credited to Mrs. Rorer. The first cannot be recommended as written; the notes below explain the terms and where the problem lies.
- Raw yolks, never heatedThe two uncooked yolks are the whole structure of the first dressing, and nothing in the method brings them anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella. The single tablespoon of vinegar is far too little acid, against a boiled potato and butter, to do any preserving work.
- "Put in a cold place until wanted"At the time that meant a larder or an icebox, neither of which reliably held food below 40F. A protein-rich, low-acid dressing standing for hours at cellar temperature favours bacterial growth. If you want a potato-bound salad dressing, use a current recipe built on pasteurized egg or a cooked base.
- Ginny pepperA period spelling of Guinea pepper, generally taken in American cookery of this sort to mean cayenne or ground red pepper. The list calls for both it and white pepper.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt spoon was the small spoon kept in the open salt cellar, roughly a quarter teaspoon. So the second dressing is about 1/4 teaspoon salt and a scant 1/2 teaspoon of the two peppers together, to 4 tablespoons of oil.
- Two typographical faults in the second recipeTwo apparent faults in the second recipe -- onion juice is listed twice, and "1½ salt-spoonful" and "1½ tablespoonful" may be the printer's rendering of ½. On that reading the vinegar is roughly half a tablespoon to four of oil, an 8:1 ratio, oilier than the usual proportions of the period.
- Onion juiceMade by halving a raw onion and scraping the cut face against a grater, or pressing it in a lemon squeezer. It gives onion flavour without any texture. The alternative the author offers, rubbing the bowl with a cut onion, is milder and worth knowing.
- The second dressing is a different matterOil, vinegar, salt, pepper and onion, mixed cold, involves no egg and no raw animal product. That one is unremarkable by modern standards and dresses lettuce, cold string beans or celery as described.
Sarah Tyson Rorer ran the Philadelphia Cooking School and edited Table Talk and later Ladies' Home Journal's domestic pages; her name attached to a dressing in a turn-of-the-century vegetable book was a mark of authority, the way a chef's name functions now. The first dressing is bound with potato rather than yolk alone: a sieved warm potato absorbs oil and butter and holds an emulsion together far more forgivingly, which mattered when everything was beaten by hand in a bowl. Tarragon vinegar, offered as an option in the first recipe, was the fashionable flavoured vinegar of the period, made by steeping the fresh herb in white wine vinegar.