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One Quart of Salad Dressing
½ C sugar 1/2 C flour 1 heaping t dry mustard 1 t salt 14 t pepper 1 t paprika 1 C vinegar Mix the above dry. Beat 2 eggs two minutes, add 2 C water 1 T butter Cook in a double boiler until thick. Add sweet cream or sour cream or milk to thin it.
Christina D. Kern.
Mrs. Eleanor Suydam uses 2 T flour and omits the paprika.
A boiled salad dressing of the cooked-custard type, thickened with flour and egg rather than emulsified with oil. It is closer to a sauce than to mayonnaise, and it keeps far better.
- The typo"14 t pepper" is a printing artifact for ¼ teaspoon. "1 heaping t dry mustard" means a rounded teaspoon, not a level one.
- Order of operationsThe instruction "mix the above dry" includes the vinegar in its list, which cannot be dry. Combine sugar, flour, mustard, salt, pepper and paprika first, then whisk in the vinegar and the beaten eggs, then the water and butter.
- Double boiler, not direct heatOver a burner this scorches easily and needs constant attention; over simmering water it comes to a smooth custard in roughly 10 to 15 minutes with constant stirring. Pull it when it coats a spoon heavily.
- Two flour amountsThe half cup in the main recipe gives a thick sauce meant to be let down with cream at serving time. Mrs. Suydam's 2 tablespoons gives a much thinner dressing straight from the pan. Choose according to whether you want to store it thick or use it now.
- ThinningThin only the portion you are about to serve, and thin it cold. The recipe offers sweet cream, sour cream or milk; sour cream gives the most tang, milk the mildest result.
- Yield and keepingAbout a quart as written, before thinning. Cool uncovered, then refrigerate in a jar; it holds about a week. It will set very firm when chilled and needs a brisk whisk to loosen.
- What it is forIt was a standard dressing for cabbage slaw, potato salad and sliced cucumbers. It is too sweet and too sharp for delicate greens.
Boiled dressing of this kind was a common American home-kitchen alternative to mayonnaise in an era before bottled salad dressing was widespread. Flour and egg do the work that oil does in a true emulsion, vinegar supplies the bite, and the cooked mixture keeps well in an icebox. Community and church cookbooks are full of such recipes, and variant proportions from a second contributor are often printed alongside the first, with both names attached. The note that Mrs. Suydam cuts the flour to two tablespoons and leaves out the paprika is exactly that kind of neighborly footnote.