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Cream Salad Dressing
One cup of butter and ½ cup of sugar creamed; add 1 tablespoon of salt, I of mustard, a pinch of cayenne pepper. Then add 4 eggs, one at a time, beatin thoroughly. Next one cup of cream and last 1½ pints of boiling vinegar. Stand over the fire until it approaches boiling point; remove and bottle. It is nice with potato salad.
A boiled dressing of the pre-mayonnaise sort: butter, eggs and hot vinegar thickened over the fire rather than emulsified cold. The text has at least two typographical slips, and the hinge is temperature.
- Never let it boilFour eggs in a cup of cream will scramble the instant the mixture breaks a simmer. Hold it around 170-175F, stirring constantly, until it coats a spoon, then pull it off the heat immediately.
- The vinegar quantityThe printed page gives 1½ pints of boiling vinegar, or 3 cups, as our text now reads. Add it slowly to temper the eggs rather than all at once.
- "I of mustard"Almost certainly the numeral 1, i.e. 1 tablespoon of mustard, and dry mustard powder rather than prepared. A tablespoon is assertive but in range for this yield.
- SaltA tablespoon of salt reads alarming, but the recipe makes a large quantity. That is roughly 18 g; if in doubt, start with two teaspoons and correct at the end.
- CreamUse heavy cream. Nineteenth-century "cream" was unhomogenised and considerably richer than today's half-and-half, and light cream will thin the finished dressing.
- Order of workCreaming a cup of butter with sugar and then beating in eggs one at a time is cake method; here it may also help the butter carry the eggs so they are less likely to scramble when the hot vinegar hits. Have the butter genuinely soft, not melted.
- Bottling and keeping"Remove and bottle" meant a cold larder and quick use. Treat it as a fresh egg sauce: cool it, refrigerate in a clean jar, and use within a week. It is not a shelf-stable preserve despite the acidity.
- Yield and useA large quantity, well over a quart if the vinegar is 1½ pints, which is a great deal for one salad. It thickens considerably when cold and can be thinned with a spoonful of cream or milk before dressing potatoes, cabbage or cold chicken.
Boiled dressing is the older American answer to salad sauce, and it persisted alongside mayonnaise well into the twentieth century. The formula -- eggs, mustard, sugar, a large charge of hot vinegar, thickened over gentle heat -- is common in community and promotional cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often with a note like this one recommending it for potato salad or slaw. Leaner versions substituted flour or a little milk for the butter.