Spicy Dressing

[mme_hardy]

 From  Woman's World, August, 1937.

4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons glycerine
1 teaspoon salt
Dash of cayenne
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard 
1/2 cup vinegar.

Combine butter and flour in double boiler, add milk gradually and cook, stirring constantly, as for white sauce.  Beat egg yolks and glycerine slightly, then add remaining ingredients, stir into first mixture, and continue cooking until thick and smooth.   Remove from fire and pour slowly over stiffly beaten egg whites, beating while pouring.  When cold cover and keep in refrigerator.

This is for making a mixed vegetable salad, or for "moistening" chopped raw vegetables for use as a sandwich spread.  It probably wasn't as dreadful as I think it sounds, but, Lord, it doesn't sound good.

e:  Five or six pages later:  "Surprise the family with delicious Grape-Nuts mousse".  I'll say.  It's an Italian meringue with cream, grape nuts, and vanilla beaten in, then frozen.

Comments

[loligo]

If forced to choose, I'd pick the Grape-Nuts mousse over the dressing… Cold, sour, fluffy white sauce? Why??

[movingfinger]

Because raw-egg mayo spoils on the picnic table in hot weather.

[mme_hardy]

Judging by my cookbooks, mayo wasn't fashionable -- for the middle classes, anyway -- under any circumstances; it was all about the boiled dressings.

[movingfinger]

I'm thinking that mayo is usually made with olive or grapeseed oils, right? I don't think those were widely distributed in the US/Canada and possibly in England/British Isles until very recently. (My mom still considers olive oil an exotic food and is convinced it will disagree with her digestion!) Access to fresh-tasting oils is crucial for mayonnaise. So there's likely a foodway thing there also. I'm not sure how far back boiled dressing goes, but it could be 18c or 17c.

[mme_hardy]

MFK Fisher mentions that the only time she ever had decent salad dressing growing up was when her grandmother was away and her father would use the baby's "sweet oil", which was olive oil used for medical purposes, to make dressing.

[sollers]

Cooking oils weren't generally available in the UK till the mid 1960S or later; lard was as important in British cooking vas bacon fat is in France.

Fresh mayonnaise would not have been an option for a whole generation anyway, as food rationing didn't finally end till 1953, and nobody would have wasted their precious egg on salad dressing.

Salads were sad affairs anyway, consisting of three or four of the following laid out on each person's plate:

A leaf or two of lettuce
A radish
Two or three slices of tomato
One or two spring onions
Three or four slices of cucumber, peeled (they were very bitter in those days, and the slices were often soaked in vinegar beforehand)
Two or three slices of pickled beetroot

Served with a couple of slices of cold meat and tinned potato salad. The only available dressing was Heinz salad cream.

[loligo]

Ah, I've heard of boiled dressing, but it is not part of the foodways of my people. When my grandparents were growing up on farms in the days before refrigeration, sour cream was the salad moistener of choice.