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Boiled Dressing
1/4 cup vinegar 3/4 tablespoon sugar 1/4 tablespoon flour 1/8 tablespoon mustard 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1 egg-yolk 1/4 tablespoon butter Heat the vinegar. Sift the dry ingredients thoroughly, add to the slightly beaten egg-yolk, and beat together well. Pour the boiling vinegar gradually upon the mixture, stirring constantly. Put in the upper part of the double boiler and cook over hot water until it thickens, stirring all the time. Add the butter and remove from the fire. Serve when cold, with or without the addition of cream, which may be whipped.
This kind of dressing may also be bought on the market. When made at home, the beaten whites of eggs or cream, plain or whipped, are often added before serving.
A cooked egg-yolk dressing from the era before bottled mayonnaise was universal: tart, thickened by egg and a little flour rather than by emulsified oil. The quantities are a single-serving scale-down, which is why they arrive in eighths and quarters of a tablespoon.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe yolk begins to thicken from about 150F and is fully set well before 180F, and the flour only protects it so far. Keep the water beneath at a bare simmer, never a rolling boil, and pull the pan the moment the dressing coats the spoon. Direct heat or inattention gives you scrambled egg in vinegar.
- Awkward fractionsA quarter tablespoon is 3/4 teaspoon; an eighth of a tablespoon is 3/8 teaspoon, so measure the mustard as a half teaspoon about three-quarters filled. Three-quarters of a tablespoon of sugar is 2 1/4 teaspoons.
- YieldRoughly 1/3 cup, which will dress a small salad; folding in cream stretches it further.
- Sift the dry into the yolk firstThe flour, mustard, sugar, salt and pepper must be fully dispersed in the yolk before any hot liquid arrives. Lumps of flour will not dissolve later, and dry mustard clumps will not hydrate evenly.
- Boiling vinegar, added slowlyThis is tempering. A thin stream with constant stirring raises the yolk's temperature gradually; dumping it in curdles the mixture on contact. Cider or white wine vinegar will give a rounder flavour than distilled.
- The double boilerAny heatproof bowl over a saucepan of hot water works. The bowl should not touch the water.
- The raw-egg-white variationThe closing suggestion of folding in beaten whites just before serving leaves those whites uncooked. If you want that lightness, use pasteurized whites, or use whipped cream instead as the same sentence allows.
- StorageFlour-thickened dressings stiffen considerably in the refrigerator. Keep it covered for no more than two days and loosen with a spoonful of cream or milk before serving.