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Sour Cream Dressing for Salads
One pint of vinegar, one pint of sour cream, one-half cupful sugar, one teaspoonful of flour, two eggs and tablespoonful of butter; put sugar and butter and vinegar in saucepan, let boil, stir eggs, cream and flour, well mixed, into vinegar, boil again.
A boiled dressing of the old school: vinegar sweetened and thickened with egg, then softened with sour cream. It makes far more than a modern cook usually wants, and the method as written invites curdling.
- The hinge: temper the eggsThe recipe says to stir the egg-cream-flour mixture straight into boiling vinegar, which will scramble it. Whisk a ladleful of the hot vinegar into the cold egg mixture first, then return everything to the pan and bring it back to a bare simmer, stirring constantly.
- "Boil again" means thickenCook only until the dressing coats a spoon, roughly 175-180F. Held at a true rolling boil, the egg proteins tighten and the cream breaks into grains and whey. If it does break, a quick blitz with an immersion blender will sometimes pull it back.
- Sour cream then and nowIn this period the term generally meant sweet cream left to sour naturally in the dairy, thinner and sharper than the thick cultured product sold today. Commercial sour cream works, though full-fat is best; low-fat versions often contain stabilizers and gums that can behave poorly when heated.
- The vinegar is strongA full pint against a half cup of sugar gives a very sharp dressing by current taste. Period household vinegar was often homemade cider vinegar of uneven and unstandardized strength, unlike the 5% bottles on the shelf now.
- MeasuresA pint is 2 cups. One teaspoon of flour in a quart of liquid does almost nothing on its own; the eggs are doing the thickening.
- YieldAbout a quart, enough for a large gathering. Halving or quartering the recipe is sensible for a household; keep any leftovers refrigerated in a sealed jar and use them within a few days.
- What to dress with itBoiled dressings of this type suit sturdy things -- shredded cabbage, potato salad, cold sliced beets, chopped chicken -- rather than delicate leaves, which the hot, heavy dressing wilts.
Boiled or cooked dressings like this one belonged to a period when olive oil was expensive and unfamiliar in much of the American interior, and mayonnaise meant a fussy hand-whisked emulsion that could break at any moment. An egg-thickened vinegar dressing needed only pantry staples and could be made in quantity and kept in the cellar or icebox. The sour cream suggests a farm or Northern European-influenced kitchen -- German, Scandinavian and Central European households in the Midwest used soured cream freely, and dressings of this kind, along with slaws and cucumber dishes, are often found in turn-of-the-century American community cookbooks. The style survives today in the sweet-sour dressings still poured over wilted lettuce and hot potato salad.