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Cooked Salad Dressing
1-3 Cups each Vinegar, Water, and Milk 1 Teaspoon each Sugar, Mustard and Salt 1 Tablespoon each Butter and Cornstarch Yolk 1 Egg A Little Cayenne Heat milk and water boiling hot. Mix salt, sugar, cornstarch, and mustard.
Add to milk and when it boils add vinegar.
When boiling add yolk of egg and stir a moment. Add butter and use hot for potato salad, and cold for other sorts.
A boiled dressing of the old school: cornstarch does the thickening, a single yolk does the enriching, and vinegar does the work mayonnaise would later do. The measurements need one act of interpretation before you start.
- "1-3 Cups each" is a typoThis is almost certainly 1/3 cup each vinegar, water and milk, which balances correctly against a tablespoon of cornstarch and one yolk. Read literally as one to three cups it makes no sense; a full cup each would leave the dressing thin and harshly acidic.
- YieldAt a third of a cup each of the three liquids you get roughly a cup of finished dressing, enough for a potato salad for six or a large bowl of greens.
- The hinge: temper the yolkThe original says to add the yolk to a boiling mixture and stir a moment. Dropping a raw yolk into boiling liquid will scramble it in threads. Whisk a few spoonfuls of the hot mixture into the yolk first, return it to the pan off the heat, and stir until it thickens slightly.
- Cornstarch needs a full boilBring it back to a boil after the vinegar goes in and hold it there briefly. Undercooked cornstarch tastes chalky, and acid weakens its thickening power, so expect a looser set than a plain milk pudding.
- Mustard means dry mustardA teaspoon of mustard in a book of this vintage is mustard powder, mixed dry with the salt, sugar and cornstarch so it disperses without lumps. Prepared jarred mustard is not a substitute at this quantity.
- Vinegar strengthUse ordinary cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity. Household vinegar of this period varied widely in strength, so taste at the end and adjust with a pinch more sugar if it bites.
- Curdling and the milkAdding vinegar to hot milk will make it look broken. The cornstarch and the whisk carry it through; keep stirring and it smooths out. Whole milk holds together better than skim.
- Hot for potato, cold for the restThe instruction is sound. Warm dressing soaks into just-boiled potatoes; chilled, the dressing firms to a spoonable consistency for cabbage, chicken or hard-boiled egg salads. Thin cold leftovers with a spoonful of milk.
Cooked or "boiled" dressings like this one were common as an American salad sauce through the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, and they persisted in home kitchens after commercial jarred mayonnaise became widely available in the 1910s. The reason is practical: mayonnaise demands a steady hand, good oil and cold conditions, while a cooked dressing uses cheap pantry staples, tolerates rough handling, and keeps for a few days in a cool place. A dressing built on milk, vinegar and a spoonful of cornstarch cost almost nothing. The hot-for-potato-salad note may reflect the warm potato salads, often described as German-influenced, found in American cooking, where the dressing is meant to be absorbed rather than to coat.