Cooked Egg Dressing

I’m not sure why it’s taken me this long to do something I could have done before my mother passed away last year. I don’t know why exactly I thought back to something my Mom told me when I was in her kitchen and she was in charge. But for some reason I remembered how Mom told me about the cooked egg dressing that her mother made and how good it was and how she didn’t have a recipe or just never believed she could recreate it so instead my mother bought a name brand dressing because it so closely resembled her beloved mother’s cooked egg dressing.

In summer my fancy turns to thoughts of deviled eggs. But not any deviled eggs, only the deviled eggs I grew up with. The ones my mother made with that name brand dressing. I’ve been trying to recreate those deviled eggs. Because of dietary issues, the ingredients in the name brand dressing are off limits for me. But a funny thing about flavor, it sticks with you even when you haven’t tasted something regularly for over a decade. Well, I decided I needed to figure out this “cooked egg dressing” or was it “boiled egg dressing.” Consulting the internet with its huge repository of recipes, it turns out it can be called by either name.

An article about Boiled Dressing has an interesting history of salad dressings. I did not know that oil is a recent addition to salad dressing recipes. The recipe provided includes flour which makes it off limits for me, so I checked this one for a Depression era recipe. The only ingredients are eggs, water, vinegar, mustard, salt and sugar. I can’t have sugar, but I can substitute honey, a common substitution in my kitchen. And I vaguely remember my mother describing the cooked egg dressing as very simple with few ingredients which made this recipe a good starting point.

Basically to make Cooked Egg Dressing, whisk together eggs, water, honey, then add vinegar, mustard powder, salt and whisk together thoroughly. Place in pan and whisk gently over low heat until it thickens (which took a little more than 5 minutes.) I made my first batch, a little too much honey so a little too sweet but very close to that name brand dressing.

So now to the deviled eggs. I have it nicer than my mother did. She had a fork, patience and tenacity and spent time getting her yolks smooth and free of lumps. I have a Magimix food processor which made quick work of the yolks. I added enough of the Cooked Egg Dressing to get the yolks wet but not sloppy, echoing in my mind what I heard my mother say. I sampled but the true test is getting my children’s feedback. I offered a sample to my youngest child and the reaction, “Just like Aunt Beth’s!!!!” I offered a sample to my eldest and the reaction, “Yep!”

That was all I needed to hear. I just wish I’d tried this before last year.

Cooked Egg Dressing

Deviled Eggs made with the cooked egg dressing