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Salad Dressing for Cabbage or Lettuce
Mrs. Parmelee.
Three eggs, two teaspoons black pepper, one teaspoon salt, one tablespoon mustard, three of melted butter, six teaspoons sweet cream, one coffee cup of vinegar; put all together, on stove, and cook till it looks smooth like cream, stirring all the time to keep from burning; then, when cold, put over cabbage chopped fine.
This is a boiled dressing — essentially a thin savory custard thickened by egg rather than by emulsified oil. It works, but it depends entirely on temperature control.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerThe eggs thicken between roughly 160F and 180F; past that they scramble and the dressing turns grainy. Use a heavy pan over low heat or a bowl over barely simmering water, stir constantly, and pull it off the moment it coats the spoon.
- "One coffee cup"In 1870s American usage a coffee cup is close to a modern 8 oz cup, though period cups ran anywhere from 3/4 cup to a full cup. Start with 3/4 cup vinegar and add more once the dressing is thick if it needs sharpening.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period was not standardized and its strength varied against today's 5% cider or white vinegar. A full cup of modern vinegar against three eggs is aggressive; cutting it with a few tablespoons of water gives a milder result.
- Sweet cream"Sweet" simply means fresh rather than soured — ordinary heavy or light cream. Six teaspoons is two tablespoons, a small amount whose job is richness, not body.
- MustardA tablespoon here most likely means dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar. Whisk it into the eggs with the salt and pepper before the liquid goes in so it does not clump.
- The pepperTwo teaspoons of black pepper is a great deal by modern taste and will dominate. One teaspoon, freshly ground, is a reasonable starting point.
- Yield and useMakes close to two cups, enough to dress a large head of cabbage. It must be fully cold before it meets the cabbage or the leaves wilt; it thickens further as it chills and keeps refrigerated a few days.
Boiled dressings like this one were widely used in American kitchens through the second half of the nineteenth century, well before bottled mayonnaise reached grocery shelves. Salad oil was expensive, of uneven quality, and often rancid by the time it reached an inland kitchen, and it is often said that cooks thickened vinegar with eggs and butter instead, making dressings still associated with coleslaw and potato salad in the Midwest. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Chicago in 1874 from contributions by named local women, is full of such attributions: Mrs. Parmelee is credited here exactly as she would have been in a church or charity cookbook, which is what this collection essentially was, its proceeds going to a Chicago charitable home. The pairing with finely chopped cabbage rather than delicate greens is telling, and a sharp, mustardy sauce is what this recipe delivers.