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Boiled Salad Dressing
1/2 tablespoon salt 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon mustard 1/2 tablespoon flour few grains cayenne 1/2 cup vinegar 2 eggs 3/4 cup milk 1 tablespoon butter or other shortening Mix dry ingredients in top of double boiler; add vinegar and beaten egg yolks and mix; add milk and butter. Cook in double boiler until thick and smooth. Take from fire and add beaten egg whites. Cool and serve.
A cooked, flour-thickened dressing of the sort that preceded bottled mayonnaise in American kitchens. It is essentially a thin savoury custard, and it behaves like one.
- The double boiler is not optionalDirect heat will scramble the yolks before the mixture thickens. Keep the water below the top pan at a bare simmer and stir constantly; the dressing is done when it coats the spoon and no longer tastes of raw flour.
- Mustard means dry powderA teaspoon of mustard here is ground yellow mustard, not prepared paste from a jar. If substituting prepared mustard, use roughly a tablespoon and expect a slightly thinner, more vinegary result.
- The egg whitesBeaten whites are folded into the hot base off the heat, which lightens it but does not fully cook them. If that matters in your household, use pasteurized whites, or return the pan to the double boiler for a minute after folding, stirring gently.
- "Or other shortening"Period shorthand for lard or vegetable shortening, offered as an economy. Butter gives much better flavour in a dressing eaten cold, and there is only a tablespoon of it.
- VinegarHalf a cup is a lot of acid for one batch against three-quarters of a cup of milk. Taste before cooling and slacken with a little more milk if it bites.
- It thickens as it coolsTake it off the heat while it is still pourable. Chilled, it sets to a spoonable consistency; whisk in a spoonful of milk or cream to loosen it for coating shredded cabbage or potatoes.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough for a large slaw or potato salad for six to eight. Refrigerate in a covered jar and use within two or three days.
Boiled dressing was a common salad sauce in American home cooking through the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, until commercial mayonnaise became cheap and widely available in the 1920s and 30s. Mayonnaise proper demands a cup or more of good oil and a steady hand with the emulsion; a cooked dressing thickened with flour and egg needs only a tablespoon of fat, forgives rough handling, and suits the vinegary cabbage and potato salads that fill the era's salad chapters.