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Sour Cream Salad Dressing
Take one cup of sour cream; one teaspoon of sugar; one tablespoon of lemon juice; one teaspoon of salt; one-eighth teaspoon of cayenne; two tablespoons of vinegar. This makes an excellent dressing for vegetable salads. Place the salt, sugar and pepper together in a bowl, mix well, and add the lemon juice, and then the vinegar. When the mixture is perfectly smooth, put in the cream, stir well, and set on the ice until needed.
An uncooked dressing that comes together in a bowl in two minutes. The only real decisions are what kind of cream you use and how much salt you are willing to put in it.
- Sour cream then and nowIn this period "sour cream" usually meant sweet cream that had been left to sour naturally, thinner and sharper than the modern product. Commercial cultured sour cream is the right substitute; full-fat cr e0me fra e7che gives a closer texture to the older, looser cream.
- SaltA full teaspoon of salt per cup of cream reads as very salty by current taste, particularly with fine-grain table salt. Start with half and adjust after the dressing has sat a few minutes, since salt takes time to register in cold dairy.
- Add the acid to the seasonings, not the creamDissolving the salt and sugar in the lemon juice and vinegar first means no gritty crystals in the finished dressing, and the acid goes into the cream already diluted, which may reduce the chance of it breaking into curds.
- CayenneAn eighth teaspoon of cayenne in a cup of dressing is noticeable but not aggressive. Ground cayenne loses heat with age; if yours has been open a year, taste before deciding it is enough.
- VinegarNo type is specified. Cider vinegar suits the period and the vegetable salads it was meant for; white wine vinegar is milder. Distilled white vinegar will be harsh at three tablespoons of total acid.
- Chilling"Set on the ice" means refrigerate. Half an hour is enough for the seasoning to come together, and the dressing should keep a few days covered in the refrigerator.
- YieldAbout one and a quarter cups, enough to dress a large bowl of cucumbers, shredded cabbage, beets or potatoes for six to eight.
Sour cream dressings belong to the older, pre-mayonnaise side of the American salad book, and they are often associated with Central and Northern European kitchens, where soured cream was a daily staple rather than a specialty item. Before mechanical refrigeration was universal, cream soured on its own as a matter of course, and a household that skimmed its own milk had a steady supply of it; using that cream for a dressing was thrift as much as taste. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued cookbooks aimed at the same middle-class housekeeper, and the presence of a plain uncooked dressing like this one alongside the more laborious boiled and mayonnaise dressings reflects that audience: something to be made in the time it takes to shred a cabbage. The instruction to set the bowl "on the ice" is a small dating mark in itself, pointing to the icebox rather than the electric refrigerator.