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Boiled Salad Dressing
INGREDIENTS.
1 teaspoonful of mustard. ½ a teaspoonful of salt. ¼ a teaspoonful of paprica.
Yolks of 3 eggs. 4 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar. 1/2 a cup of thick cream. 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon juice.
Method.- Mix together the mustard, salt and paprica, and add the yolks of eggs; stir well and add slowly the butter, vinegar and lemon juice, and cook in the double boiler until thick as soft custard. When cool and ready to serve, add the cream, beaten stiff with the Dover egg-beater.
A cooked egg-yolk dressing lightened with whipped cream — closer to a savoury custard than to mayonnaise, and far more forgiving because the emulsion is set by heat rather than by beating oil into yolks.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe double boiler is not optional. Set the bowl over barely simmering water, not boiling, and stir constantly; the yolks scramble the moment the mixture climbs much above 180F. Pull it off the heat while it still flows, since it thickens further as it cools.
- QuantitiesRead the seasonings as 1 teaspoon dry mustard, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon paprika. "Paprica" is ordinary sweet paprika; it is there for colour and warmth, not heat.
- Cream"Thick cream" means heavy or whipping cream, at least 36 percent fat. Half a cup whips to about a cup, which is what gives the finished dressing its body.
- Dover egg-beaterA hand-cranked rotary beater. A balloon whisk or an electric mixer does the same job; the recipe asks for the cream to be beaten stiff before it is added to the cooled custard.
- Doneness"Thick as soft custard" is the whole test — the dressing should coat the back of a spoon and leave a clear line when you draw a finger through it. That stage also carries the yolks past a safe temperature.
- Order of workThe recipe adds the melted butter before the vinegar and lemon juice; add it in a thin stream and whisk it smooth before the acids go in.
- Yield and keepingAbout a cup and a half, enough for a salad for six to eight. The custard base keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator, but fold in the whipped cream only at the moment of serving or it will weep.
- Where it belongsSuited to fruit and cabbage salads, and to potato salad, chicken salad and sliced tomatoes.
Boiled dressings predate reliable mayonnaise in American home kitchens: before cheap bottled oil and mechanical beaters, an emulsion of egg yolk and oil was fussy and prone to splitting, while a cooked yolk-and-butter custard sharpened with vinegar held together dependably and used ingredients any household had. The boiled version is the one recommended for church suppers, picnics and large gatherings. The instruction to use "the Dover egg-beater" dates the page neatly he Standard American kitchen tool of the late nineteenth century, so familiar that writers named it as casually as we would say "a whisk." Folding whipped cream into the cooled base is the refinement that turns a plain boiled dressing into something richer, and it may well have been meant for the fruit and vegetable salads said to have been fashionable at the time.