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Cream French Dressing
1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon paprika 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice 4 tablespoons heavy cream Mix the first three ingredients until well blended, then add the cream beaten until stiff.
A four-ingredient dressing that depends entirely on order of operations: the seasonings and acid are blended first, and the whipped cream goes in last so it is not deflated by stirring.
- Fold, do not stirWhip the cream to stiff peaks in a separate bowl. The recipe adds the cream to the seasoned vinegar, so bring the two together gently with a spatula rather than beating; vigorous stirring will knock much of the air out.
- Add the acid at the last momentVinegar or lemon juice slackens whipped cream over time. Dress the salad soon after mixing rather than holding the dressing in the refrigerator.
- Heavy cream means heavy creamUse cream at 36 percent butterfat or above, well chilled. Modern ultra-pasteurized cream whips but holds less well; regular pasteurized heavy cream gives a firmer, longer-lasting foam.
- PaprikaHere paprika means ordinary sweet paprika used mostly for colour and a faint warmth, not the smoked Spanish kind. An eighth of a teaspoon will only faintly tint the dressing.
- YieldAbout half a cup of dressing once whipped, enough for a salad for four. It suits fruit salads, sliced tomatoes, and crisp lettuce rather than anything already rich.
- Adjust the acid to tasteOne tablespoon of vinegar to four of cream is quite mild by current standards. Cider vinegar or lemon juice is gentler than distilled white; taste the seasoned acid before folding, since you cannot correct it afterward without knocking the air out.
"French dressing" in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries meant simply oil, vinegar, salt and pepper beaten together, the dressing associated with French service of plain green salad, and it accumulated a long list of variations that kept the name while abandoning the formula. This one drops the oil entirely and substitutes whipped cream for the richness. Whipped-cream dressings of this kind were often associated with fruit salads, which became fashionable in the same decades.