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Cooked Cream Dressing
1/4 cup Mazola 1/4 teaspoon cayenne 3 tablespoons Karo, Red or 3 tablespoons Argo or Blue Label Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 2 eggs, beaten 1 teaspoon salt 1¼ cups top milk 3/4 cup very mild vinegar Combine the Mazola, Karo, the dry ingredients and the eggs in a double boiler top. Gradually stir in the milk which should be scalded, and cook over hot water, stirring constantly until thick like white sauce; then gradually add the vinegar, heated, and beat with an egg beater until the mixture thickens again. Dilute with mild vinegar, sweet or sour cream as needed. This may be used with any meat, fruit, fish, egg or vegetable salad.
A boiled (cooked) salad dressing of the sort that filled American luncheon tables before jarred mayonnaise took over. The whole thing lives or dies on gentle heat: cooked over direct flame the eggs will scramble and the starch will scorch.
- Brand names decodedMazola is corn oil, Karo is corn syrup (the Red or Blue Label refers to the two grades then sold; either works, Blue being lighter in flavour), and Argo or Kingsford's is plain cornstarch. Any neutral oil, light corn syrup and cornstarch will behave the same.
- Top milkBefore homogenisation, "top milk" was the cream-rich layer poured off the top of the bottle. Half-and-half is the closest modern equivalent; whole milk works but gives a thinner, less silky dressing.
- The vinegar is the risk point"very mild vinegar" points to a low-acid vinegar, and household vinegars of the period varied in strength, some weaker than today's standard 5 per cent. Three-quarters of a cup of modern vinegar may come out aggressively sharp. Start with half that, heated, and taste before adding more.
- Heat the vinegar firstThe instruction to add it hot is not decoration. Cold acid poured into a hot starch-and-egg base will shock it into curdling and thin it out. Warm it in a small pan and add it in a slow stream.
- Cook to a proper set"thick like white sauce" is the cue: the starch has swollen and the eggs have set. Keep the water below a rolling boil and stir without stopping; the mixture will loosen when the vinegar goes in and then thicken again under the beater.
- Cayenne quantityA quarter teaspoon spread through the finished dressing is noticeable warmth. Halve it if serving with fruit salad.
- Yield and keepingMakes roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups. Cool, cover and refrigerate; it will thicken considerably when cold, which is why the recipe tells you to thin it with vinegar or cream at serving time.
This is promotional cookery: Mazola, Karo, Argo and Kingsford's were all products of the Corn Products Refining Company, and booklets like this one existed to put a corn-derived ingredient into every line of a recipe. The dish itself is older than the branding. Cooked or "boiled" dressing, thickened with egg and starch and sharpened with vinegar, is often said to have been a mainstay American salad sauce through the nineteenth century, cheaper and steadier than an emulsified mayonnaise in a kitchen without ice. The corn syrup here does the work that sugar did in older versions, rounding off the acid; the oil is a nod to mayonnaise without the labour of building an emulsion.