Course: Salad Dressing
Tags: Vegetarian

GPB’s Mother’s One Egg Salad Dressing

boiled_mayonnaise.jpg

When I was young, there was only one dressing: One-Egg Salad Dressing. Miracle Whip was available, but it didn’t really count as it was "boughten" and none of us liked it very much; we only had a bottle of it when we spent our annual month in a cabin at the beach.

My parents were originally from Prince Edward Island, and all my aunts (no man I knew cooked) used the same recipe. More recently I’ve discovered that this recipe was ubiquitous across the Maritimes and in Newfoundland.

It was used in egg sandwiches, potato salad, and even on the simple salads — leaf lettuce, tomato, and cucumber — that we ate in those days. One-Egg Salad reigned supreme until the appearance on the grocery shelves of the oddly orange Kraft French Dressing and the equally colourful Catalina. I still make One-Egg Salad Dressing to combine with Hellman’s when I make potato salad.

This dressing is a perfect example of a recipe whose precise origins are lost but which spread and evolved over the decades. The first version I have found was in Fanny Farmer’s 1897 Boston City School Cookbook, and that recipe was recently republished in Downtown Abbey Cooks.

Source

Blanche Brooks (GPB's mother)

Ingredients

1egg
¾ csugar
1 tbspflour
2 tspdry mustard
salt & pepper
¾ cuphomogenized milk or 5% cream
½ cupvinegar
2 tbspbutter

Bust Out

double boiler (or very thick-bottomed pan)
covered jar

Steps

    Gary writes: This was a favourite Maritime recipe for cooks of my mother’s generation.
    This salad dressing can be used as a substitute for mayonnaise in potato salad or sandwich fillings such as egg, ham, tuna, salmon, chicken, etc. It can also be used in a chopped broccoli salad.
    Refrigerated, it will keep 3-4 weeks.
    If you want a slightly more piquant dressing, add 1 tsp smooth prepared mustard and a pinch of cayenne, but try the basic version first.

    Dan MacKay writes: this is the same as my Aunt Mayme Champion's Boiled Mayonnaise too, I think.

  1. Beat the egg well.
  2. Whisk in the sugar.
  3. Add the flour, dry mustard, salt & pepper to taste.
  4. Add the homogenized milk or 5% cream and the vinegar.
  5. Stirring fairly constantly, cook over medium heat in a double boiler (or very thick-bottomed pan) until thickened.
  6. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.
  7. Check the sweetness and the seasoning. Adjust if necessary.
  8. Cool, store in a covered jar, and refrigerate.