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Salad Dressing (T olive oil T butter t sugar t)
3 eggs. 1 C cream. 1 1/2 t mustard. 1/2 C vinegar. Dash cayenne. 1 T olive oil 1 T butter 12 t sugar 1½ t salt Beat eggs; add cream and beat. Dissolve mustard in vinegar, add cayenne, salt and sugar. Add to eggs and cream and beat. Add oil and butter and cook in double boiler stirring constantly. Beat and cool.
A cooked (boiled) salad dressing of the kind that preceded jarred mayonnaise in Midwestern kitchens. As printed here the ingredient list has been badly truncated, so read the method first and reconstruct from it.
- The list is incompleteThe method calls for eggs, cream, dry mustard, vinegar and cayenne, none of which survive in the printed ingredient line. Quantities for them are simply not recoverable from this page; if you want to attempt it, something on the order of 2 eggs, 1/2 cup cream, 1 teaspoon dry mustard and 1/4 cup vinegar to the tablespoon each of oil and butter would be a reasonable guess, but it is a guess and not what the book says.
- T and tCapital T is a tablespoon, lowercase t a teaspoon. "12 t sugar" is almost certainly a mangled 1/2 t, since a dozen teaspoons of sugar would swamp a dressing built on one tablespoon of oil.
- Mustard means dry mustardIn a dressing of this type, unqualified "mustard" is normally powdered mustard, not the prepared yellow condiment. Dissolving it in the vinegar first, as directed, both smooths out lumps and lets the heat knock back its raw bite.
- The hinge is the double boilerThis is a thin custard. Keep the water below a simmer and stir without stopping; if the base climbs much past 175F the egg scrambles and no amount of beating will bring it back. Pull it the moment it coats the spoon.
- Beat and coolBeating off the heat is not decoration. It breaks up any incipient curdling and drops the temperature fast; setting the pan in cold water while you beat helps. The dressing thickens appreciably as it chills.
- Butter and oil togetherOne tablespoon of each is a token amount by modern standards, and the butter will firm up cold, giving the dressing a slightly waxy set. That was normal and expected in this style; it loosens if you let it stand at room temperature briefly before serving.
- Yield and useAt the guessed proportions above it would make roughly a cup. A dressing of this weight and sharpness suits cabbage slaw, potato salad and cold sliced vegetables better than delicate greens, though the page says nothing about its intended use. Refrigerate and use within three or four days.
Cooked salad dressings like this one were the workhorse of American home kitchens before commercial mayonnaise became cheap and ubiquitous, a shift generally traced to the 1910s through the 1930s. They cost less than a true oil emulsion and did not require the steady arm that hand-beaten mayonnaise demanded. The sharp mustard-and-vinegar profile suggests it was understood less as a sauce than as a condiment, poured over shredded cabbage or cold potatoes and served alongside the rest of a supper table.