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Dressing for Salad
Mrs. Hoge.
Two raw eggs, one tablespoon of butter, eight tablespoons of vinegar; one-half teaspoon of mustard; put in a bowl over boiling water and stir until it becomes like cream; pepper and salt to your taste.
A boiled dressing of the type that preceded oil-based mayonnaise in American kitchens: eggs thickened over water, sharpened with vinegar rather than smoothed with oil. It comes together in a few minutes and fails in seconds if the water is allowed to touch the bowl.
- The hinge: gentle heat, constant motionSet the bowl over barely simmering water, not a hard boil, and keep the bottom clear of the water. Stir without stopping until the mixture coats the spoon like thin cream, then take it off the heat immediately; carryover heat will keep it thickening and it will scramble if you wait for it to look thick in the bowl.
- Temperature to aim forThe dressing thickens at roughly 160-170F, which is also the point at which the eggs are safely cooked. An instant-read thermometer is more reliable than appearance here.
- Mustard"One-half teaspoon of mustard" in a book of this period most likely means dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar. Whisk it in with the raw eggs so it has time to hydrate.
- The vinegar is the variableEight tablespoons is half a cup, and against two eggs that is a very sharp dressing by modern taste. Nineteenth-century household vinegar was inconsistent in strength; with standard 5 percent cider vinegar, start with half the amount and add the rest to taste after it has thickened.
- ButterOne tablespoon. The recipe adds it at the start; stirring it in off the heat at the end instead will melt it through and give the dressing gloss.
- Yield and consistencyClose to a cup, enough for a large bowl of lettuce, a potato salad for six, or shredded cabbage. It sets firmer as it cools; loosen it with a spoonful of cream or milk before dressing anything delicate.
- KeepingAn egg dressing with no oil and no preservative beyond vinegar. Refrigerate and use within two or three days; a brisk whisk while cold will usually bring it back together if it separates.
Before commercial mayonnaise, one common way of dressing a salad was something like this: a cooked, vinegar-forward emulsion of egg and butter, called a boiled dressing, which needed no oil at all, an ingredient that was expensive and often rancid in the inland Midwest. The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women and sold to benefit the Chicago Home for the Friendless, which is why so many entries carry an attribution like this one; Mrs. Hoge is plausibly Jane Currie Blaikie Hoge, a prominent Chicago reformer and Sanitary Commission organizer during the Civil War. Cooked dressings of this kind persisted well into the twentieth century in coleslaw and potato salad, and the tangy, mustard-sharp flavor of bottled salad dressings sold as distinct from mayonnaise bears a general resemblance to them.