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Lettuce
Mrs. S. McMaster.
Three eggs, two teaspoons black pepper, one teaspoon salt, one tablespoon mustard, three tablespoons melted butter, six teaspoons sweet cream, one coffee-cup of good vinegar. Put all on the stove and cook until it looks like cream, taking care to stir it all the time.
A cooked (boiled) salad dressing for lettuce, thickened with egg rather than emulsified with oil. It comes together in a few minutes and the whole risk is scrambling it.
- The hinge: gentle heatThis is a savoury custard. Cook it in a double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat, stirring constantly, and pull it the moment it coats the back of a spoon — around 170F. Direct high heat will scramble the eggs into the vinegar in seconds.
- A coffee-cupIn this period a coffee-cup is roughly a standard cup, 8 fl oz, though period cups ran anywhere from 6 to 8 ounces. Start with 3/4 cup of vinegar and judge; the dressing should be sharp but not searing.
- MustardMost likely dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar. Whisk it into the eggs before the vinegar goes in so it does not stay lumpy.
- Two teaspoons of pepperThat is a genuinely peppery dressing by modern taste, and pre-ground pepper of the period may well have been coarser and less pungent than what you buy now. A teaspoon of freshly ground is closer to the intended effect.
- Sweet creamSimply fresh, unsoured cream — the term distinguishes it from the sour cream that was common in a household without refrigeration. Any heavy or whipping cream works.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period was frequently cider vinegar, sometimes home-made and of uneven strength. Modern 5 percent cider vinegar is the natural substitute; distilled white will taste harsher.
- Texture on coolingIt thickens considerably as it cools, so take it off the heat looking slightly loose. If it stiffens too much in the refrigerator, slacken it with a spoonful of cream.
- Yield and useThe quantities come to roughly two cups. Some cooks poured it warm over the leaves so they wilt slightly; it also keeps several days covered in the refrigerator and works on cold potatoes, cabbage or cold chicken.
Cooked dressings like this one were widely used for salad in North America long before bottled mayonnaise: eggs, vinegar, mustard and a little butter or cream, thickened over the stove, in a period when good salad oil was expensive, imported and prone to going rancid in a warm pantry. The result is closer to a mustard custard than to a vinaigrette, and it is often said to be a forerunner of the sweet-sour "boiled dressing" still sold for coleslaw and potato salad. Its appearance here under a contributor's name is typical of the book's construction — The Home Cook Book is generally traced to Toronto in the 1870s, assembled from recipes donated by named local women and sold to raise money for charity, a format that spread through hundreds of North American community cookbooks over the following half-century. Each dish carries the cook's name as a kind of warranty, and near-identical lettuce dressings appear in these volumes with different attributions.