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Piquant French Dressing
1/2 cup Mazola 1 teaspoon Karo, Blue Label 2 tablespoons vinegar 2 tablespoons chow-chow 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon paprika Beat well and serve with any vegetable, fish or cheese salad.
A shaken oil-and-vinegar dressing from a corn-products promotional booklet, sharpened with pickle relish. Two of the four brand-name ingredients need translating.
- MazolaCorn oil, then as now. Any neutral oil works; corn oil is what the booklet was selling.
- Karo, Blue LabelKaro was sold in colour-coded grades, with Blue Label generally the light, near-colourless corn syrup. Light corn syrup is the direct substitute, and a teaspoon of sugar or honey does the same job of rounding the vinegar.
- Chow-chowA chopped pickle relish, commonly of cabbage, green tomato, onion and pepper; many period versions sit in a turmeric-mustard brine, though recipes vary by region. Sweet pickle relish or a mustard piccalilli stands in; chop it fine so the dressing pours.
- The ratioFour parts oil to one part vinegar is oilier than the modern three-to-one, and the chow-chow brine is the only other acid. Taste before serving and add vinegar or lemon by the teaspoon if it reads flat.
- BeatingThere is no egg or mustard paste here, so the emulsion is temporary. A jar and thirty seconds of hard shaking does more than a whisk, and it will need shaking again at the table.
- Yield and keepingAbout three-quarters of a cup. Refrigerated it will keep for several days; corn oil clouds and thickens when cold, so let it stand at room temperature before shaking.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the Corn Products Refining Company, whose two consumer brands, Karo syrup and Mazola oil, recur throughout such booklets — the recipes exist to demonstrate the products. Corn oil was still relatively new to American kitchens in the 1910s and 1920s, a by-product of corn milling promoted as a cheaper, blander alternative to olive oil for salads and frying, and a booklet like this was a standard way to teach cooks what to do with it. "French dressing" in American usage meant simply oil, vinegar and seasoning; "piquant" here signals only the spoonfuls of pickle. The teaspoon of corn syrup suits a booklet selling Karo, and American commercial dressings of the period did tend to run sweeter — a tendency that fed into the bottled orange-coloured product later sold as French dressing.