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Salad Dressing
3 eggs. 1 teaspoon flour. 1/2 teaspoon mustard. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 1/4 cup sugar. 1/2 teaspoon celery seed cup sugar 1 tablespoon butter, melted 1/2 cup very mild white vinegar Beat eggs very light, add sugar and other dry ingredients, then melted butter-pour this mixture into vinegar-which must be at the boiling point. Stir until thick. Put into sealed jars and thin by adding cream.
Use Standard Foods Often housewives, who are splendid cooks, and who use the utmost care and precision in the assembling of their recipes, rob themselves of the good results that should follow, by the use of some unknown product, which they are induced to buy through the aid of lotteries, gifts, premium coupons, soap clubs, tea and coffee peddlers or other schemes. One of the most common tricks of unscrupulous firms is to pretend to give "something for nothing" by presenting premiums with goods purchased. These methods are very rarely practiced by regular grocers. They are carried on by peddling wagons of the socalled Tea Companies, whose agents (usually irresponsible men), selling inferior grades of teas, coffees, spices and baking powders, charge an exorbitant price, and give premiums or tickets with them.
Every intelligent housewife knows that these goods are not uniform or of merit. Also these goods cannot be guaranteed. If anything goes wrong with them, your pedlier is miles away.
In order to feel strictly safe about your bakings, and to insure the best results, it is necessary to use only Standard goods of uniform strength and purity. These brands of established merit you can buy from your local grocer under his strict guarantee. They are in every way very much superior to the unknown brands that are offered at your door by the "Something for Nothing" faker. Money spent with your grocer comes back to you in full value in high grade goods that will bring satisfaction in your bakings, while the saving in price will represent double the value of the so-called gifts.
The young housekeeper need not fear any baking failures if she uses Calumet Baking Powder. Her cakes and biscuits will be better "than mother made." = Candies
This is a boiled dressing — the cooked, sweet-sour, egg-thickened kind that dressed cabbage and potato salad before bottled mayonnaise took over. The printed ingredient list has come down to us incomplete, so read it as a method rather than a formula.
- The list is missing piecesThe instructions call for beaten eggs, which do not appear in the list as printed, and for "other dry ingredients" beyond the celery seed that is listed; the sugar quantity has also lost its number, reading only "cup sugar." Comparable boiled dressings of the period commonly run to something like 2 eggs, about 1/4 cup sugar, a teaspoon of dry mustard and 1/2 teaspoon salt to 1/2 cup vinegar.
- The hinge: heat controlPouring an egg-and-sugar mixture into boiling vinegar will curdle it unless you move fast and stir hard, and better still pour in a thin stream. A common modern approach is the reverse — temper the hot vinegar into the eggs, then thicken the whole over low heat or a water bath until it coats a spoon, around 170-180F.
- "Very mild white vinegar"Household vinegar of this period varied widely in strength. Modern distilled white vinegar at 5 percent acidity is sharper than what is meant here; cider vinegar, or white vinegar cut with a spoonful of water, is closer to the intent.
- Thickening without flourThere is no flour or starch here, so the eggs do all the work. It will thicken suddenly and then, if pushed, split — pull it off the heat while it still looks slightly loose.
- Storage, not canning"Sealed jars" here means covered jars in a cold cellar or icebox, not a preserving process. Treat it as a fresh egg sauce: refrigerate and use within a week. Once thinned with cream it should be used the same day.
- Thinning with creamThe concentrated base is meant to be let down at serving time. Start with a tablespoon of cream per 1/4 cup of base and go by eye; it should pour thickly.
- YieldAssuming two eggs and 1/2 cup vinegar, this makes roughly a cup of base — enough, once thinned, to dress a large bowl of slaw or potato salad.
- Ignore the advertisementThe Calumet copy that follows the recipe has nothing to do with the dressing, which contains no baking powder at all. Reliable Recipes was published as a promotional cookbook, and the sales text runs straight into the recipes.
Boiled dressing belongs to a era before commercial mayonnaise, and to a thrifty tradition in which sugar and vinegar cooked with eggs — sometimes stretched with flour and milk — stood in for a dressing made with a cup of expensive olive oil. It was in general use across the United States as a dressing for cabbage, potato and cold meat salads. Reliable Recipes itself was a promotional cookbook issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, which is why a page of household recipes carries a long lecture on buying only "standard" brands from your grocer. The complaint about peddlers dispensing tea, coffee, spices and baking powder with premium coupons reflects a real commercial fight of the period: branded, nationally advertised goods were displacing door-to-door sellers and bulk grocery scoops, and cookbooks like this one were among the weapons.