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Salad Dressing (One cup vinegar tbsp butter)
One cup vinegar, 1 tbsp. butter; heat and melt together. 1 tbsp. mustard dissolved in a little water, 1 tsp. salt, 3 tsp. sugar; yolks of four eggs or two whole eggs; 1/3 cup milk, 1 tbsp. flour dissolved in milk. Mix all together and cook like a custard in double boiler.
— Mrs. Roscoe Blunt
A boiled dressing of the pre-mayonnaise sort: vinegar thickened with egg and a little flour, sharp enough to stand up to cabbage or potatoes. The whole thing hinges on gentle heat, which is why the double boiler is specified.
- "1 tbsp. mustard" means dry powder"1 tbsp. mustard" most likely means dry powder -- In community cookbooks of this period, unqualified "mustard" in a dressing is usually ground mustard flour rather than prepared condiment. A tablespoon of it is assertive; start with two teaspoons if you want a milder dressing.
- Vinegar strengthA full cup of vinegar is a lot of acid by modern taste, and household vinegar of the period was not standardised to today's 5 percent, so its strength varied. Cider vinegar suits this best; white distilled will be harsh.
- Temper the eggsWhisk the beaten eggs and the flour-milk slurry together, then dribble in some of the hot vinegar mixture before returning everything to the pan. Adding cold egg straight into hot acid is the usual cause of a curdled, grainy dressing.
- How hot, and how longOver simmering — not boiling — water, stir constantly for 8 to 12 minutes until the dressing coats a spoon and reads about 175F. It thickens further as it cools, so pull it while it still looks slightly loose.
- If it splitsA dressing that goes granular can usually be rescued by pushing it through a fine sieve or blitzing it briefly; the flour gives it more tolerance than a pure custard would have.
- Yield and keepingAbout a cup and a half, enough for a large bowl of slaw or a potato salad for six to eight. Refrigerate in a covered jar and use within four or five days; it will set firm and can be thinned with a spoonful of milk or cream.
- Butter, not oilThe single tablespoon of butter is all the fat here, so this is a lean, tart dressing rather than a rich one. Some period recipes soften such dressings with a few spoons of cream stirred in at serving time.
Boiled dressings like this one were staples of American home cookery before commercial mayonnaise became cheap and widespread in the 1920s and 30s. Emulsifying oil into raw yolk by hand is slow and unforgiving, whereas a cooked vinegar-and-egg dressing thickened with a little flour is nearly foolproof, keeps for days in a cool cupboard or icebox, and uses ingredients any farm kitchen already had. That is why church and society cookbooks of the era commonly carry more than one version, each under a contributor's name — here Mrs. Roscoe Blunt's, the Philathea Cook Book being a fundraiser compiled from the recipes of a women's Bible class of the Baraca-Philathea movement. The dry mustard and the generous sugar point toward the sweet-sour dressings of German and Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, which are traditionally credited with shaping the American slaw and hot potato salad.