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Russian Dressing
3 tablespoons mayonnaise. 1 tablespoon Chili sauce. 1 teaspoon tarragon vinegar. 1 chopped pimento. A little chives, cut fine. A dash of paprika. A little mustard. A little salt.
If too thick make thin with vinegar same as used in dressing. CHEESE BALLS No. 1. 1/2 lb. cream cheese. 2 tablespoons cream. 1 teaspoon French mustard. Season with pepper and salt and a little onion. Grate or mash cheese. Add mustard, cream and seasoning. Form into balls and serve on lettuce. They may be rolled in ground nuts.
CHEESE BALLS No. 2. 1/2 cup milk. 1 cup cream cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. Put milk over fire in double boiler. Add cheese; stir until thick. Let cool, make into balls, put English walnut on each side and serve with salad or meat course.
Ground and browned almonds mixed with cheese makes a good combination. Make into balls and serve as above.
Three cold assemblies run together on one page: a Russian dressing and two cheese balls meant to sit beside it on the salad plate. Nothing needs an oven, and the only real technique is in Cheese Balls No. 2.
- YieldThe dressing makes about a quarter cup. Scale it by four for a family bowl; the proportions hold.
- Chili sauceIn 1920 this means the thick, sweet-sour tomato relish sold in bottles beside the ketchup, not a hot sauce. Modern bottled chili sauce (Heinz-style) is the same product; sriracha or sambal is not a substitute.
- PimentoOne canned or jarred pimiento, drained and chopped fine. A roasted red pepper, patted dry, works identically.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth keeping. If you have none, steep a bruised tarragon sprig in white wine vinegar for an hour rather than substituting plain vinegar, which loses the perfume the dressing is built on.
- "A little mustard"Unspecified; either dry mustard powder (about a quarter teaspoon, dissolved in the vinegar before it goes in) or prepared mustard, which will work but thins the dressing further.
- French mustardIn the cheese balls this means a smooth Dijon-type mustard, not the bright yellow American kind.
- Cream cheese, then and nowThe cream cheese of the period was a fresh, unstabilized cheese, though the instruction to 'grate or mash' suggests it could be firm; modern block cream cheese needs no mashing and may take less cream — start with one tablespoon in No. 1 and add only if the mixture will not hold a ball.
- The hinge in No. 2The milk and cheese must be warmed gently in the double boiler only until the mixture pulls together and thickens. Direct heat or a hard simmer will break it into curds and weeping fat, and it will not set into balls when cooled.
- Chilling and shapingBoth mixtures roll far more cleanly after 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll in the nuts last, just before serving, or the coating softens.
History: Russian dressing appears in American cookbooks in the 1910s and 1920s, and Wilson's version is typical of the early form: mayonnaise reddened and sharpened with bottled chili sauce, pimiento and herbs. The name is generally traced to the caviar or to the Russian-style sour-cream additions found in some early recipes, though the connection is traditional rather than documented; the dressing itself is thoroughly American. Mrs. Wilson wrote as a newspaper food columnist for a Philadelphia readership managing wartime and postwar economies, which explains the scale here — a few tablespoons, made to order, from things already in the pantry. The cheese balls that follow show the same instinct: a half-pound of fresh cheese, some cream and a handful of nuts stretched into a course that looks composed on a lettuce leaf.