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Claret Dressing
(For lettuce or fruit salad.) Mix half a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper, white or paprica, and four tablespoonfuls of oil; add gradually one tablespoonful of claret and one tablespoonful of lemon juice or vinegar.
A plain vinaigrette with red wine standing in for part of the acid. The only technique that matters is adding the liquids slowly to the oil so the dressing thickens rather than separating on the plate.
- What claret meansClaret is the old English name for red Bordeaux. Any dry, medium-bodied red works — a Cabernet or Merlot blend is closest in spirit. Avoid anything sweet, oaky or jammy, which will read as syrupy against the lemon.
- PapricaAn older spelling of paprika. Sweet paprika, most likely Hungarian, is the probable intention, and in dressings of this kind it did as much for the rosy colour as for the flavour. Smoked paprika, though not itself a new product, only became widely available much later and will dominate here.
- The oilIn American salad-dressing recipes of this period, unqualified "oil" generally meant olive oil. A grassy, peppery modern extra-virgin will fight the wine; a gentler oil suits it better.
- ProportionsFour tablespoons oil to two tablespoons total acid is a 2:1 ratio, sharper than the 3:1 commonly given today. If it tastes aggressive, add another tablespoon of oil rather than cutting the wine.
- Order of mixingThe recipe has the salt and pepper mixed with the oil first, then the wine and lemon beaten in gradually. Expect an emulsion of this kind to split on standing; re-shake or re-beat before dressing the greens.
- YieldAbout six tablespoons, which will dress a head of lettuce or a bowl of cut fruit. Dress fruit at the last moment, since the salt will draw juice out of cut melon and citrus.
This comes from Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties (1899), her own book — she edited the Boston Cooking School Magazine — and it belongs to a moment when American cookbooks were expanding "French dressing" into a whole chapter of variations. Claret itself is an English trade term for the red wines of Bordeaux, generally traced to the medieval clairet, a lighter-colored wine. Its appearance in a salad dressing says something about the period's table: wine was a pantry ingredient in the genteel household, and a spoonful of it in a vinaigrette signaled refinement at almost no cost. That the same dressing is offered for both lettuce and fruit also reflects the era's fashion for sweet-savory salads, which were then still novel enough to need instruction.