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Cheese Dressing
Cut a cream cheese in half and rub one-half to a paste, with four tablespoons of olive oil, and one of white wine vinegar, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and one teaspoon of salt. It should have the consistency of Mayonnaise dressing.
A three-ingredient emulsion that behaves like a loose mayonnaise, thickened with fresh cheese instead of egg yolk. The main difficulties are working out what "a cream cheese" meant and correcting the salt.
- "A cream cheese"One of the small fresh cheeses then sold by the piece, of the Neufchatel or petit-suisse type; such units were often in the region of 3 oz, so half would be roughly 1.5 oz, or about 3 tablespoons of modern block cream cheese. Use the full-fat kind, since reduced-fat versions contain gums that can turn gluey when beaten with oil.
- The salt is out of proportionA teaspoon of salt to about half a cup of dressing is aggressively salty by present standards, particularly with a salted commercial cheese. Start with a quarter teaspoon and taste.
- Rub to a paste firstThe hinge of the recipe. The cheese must be completely smooth and slack before any oil goes in, or the dressing stays grainy. Bring it fully to room temperature and work it against the bowl with the back of a spoon.
- Add the oil slowlyFour tablespoons of oil into 1.5 oz of cheese is a lot of fat for a soft solid to carry. Beat it in a teaspoon at a time as you would for mayonnaise. The original gives no order for the additions, but holding the vinegar back until the end loosens the finished paste.
- VinegarOne tablespoon of white wine vinegar. If the result is stiffer than you want, thin with a little cream or milk rather than more vinegar, which will make it sharp.
- CayenneA pinch here means a genuinely small amount: an eighth of a teaspoon or less. Ground cayenne sold today is likely more uniform in strength than the period product, so add it cautiously.
- Yield and keepingMakes about half a cup, enough for a salad for four. It thickens in the refrigerator; keep it no more than two or three days and beat it smooth again before serving.
The "cream cheese" of the period is generally taken to have been not the stabilised block product familiar now but an unripened soft cheese, the Neufchâtel and petit-suisse styles among them, and the instruction to cut one in half suggests the author expected a standard small unit rather than a measured weight. The comparison to mayonnaise appears to be doing real work in the original text — mayonnaise was the reference dressing of the era, and telling a cook to match its consistency was a quick way to describe a target without a thermometer, a scale, or a photograph.