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Thousand Island Dressing (T chopped pimento T chopped)
1 T chopped pimento 1 T chopped onion 1 T chopped green pepper 2T Chili Sauce 4 T mayonnaise Luella Ray. 1 T each oil and vinegar Paprika 1 C whipped cream Mix well, adding whipped cream last.
A church-supper version of Thousand Island, lightened with whipped cream rather than the more familiar all-mayonnaise base. The ingredient list runs together in the original and the contributor's name has been set in the middle of it; read it as nine items plus the instruction.
- UnitsT is tablespoon, C is cup. The measured ingredients come to 11 tablespoons, about two-thirds of a cup, plus a cup of whipped cream, so a little under two cups in all -- enough dressing for a large bowl of salad.
- Chili sauceIn American cookbooks of this period chili sauce means a thick, sweet-sour tomato relish in the ketchup family, not a hot pepper sauce. The bottled kind sold beside the ketchup is the right thing.
- PimentoCanned or jarred sweet red pimento peppers, drained and blotted before chopping. Roasted red pepper from a jar is the nearest current equivalent.
- Whipped creamUnsweetened heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks. The recipe says only to add it last; folding it in rather than beating it hard will keep the dressing light, since overworked cream turns heavy and buttery.
- PaprikaNo quantity is given, as was common where a spice was used to taste or as a garnish; sweet paprika, not smoked or hot.
- TimingBest made shortly before serving. Whipped cream folded into a dressing loses volume and weeps on standing.
- SeasoningNo salt is listed. Taste before the cream goes in, when the flavours are still concentrated, and correct then.
Thousand Island dressing is generally traced to the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River in the first decade of the twentieth century, with several competing origin stories attached to summer hotels and fishing guides there; none is firmly documented. By the 1920s it was standard in American community cookbooks, and this version shows how such recipes travelled: contributed by name and written in shorthand for a cook who already knew what chili sauce and mayonnaise were.