General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI am not using Russian Dressing on my salads
But I never used Russian Dressing. That stuff is vile.
LisaL
(44,974 posts)So if you wanted to, you could safely use it. You could even deep your freedom fries into it.
agingdem
(7,857 posts)Minnie Mouse in pants, Dr. Seuss pulled from shelves, Big Bird taking a jab...and now Russian Dressing...Chucky Toad is right...both sides do it!!!
Wicked Blue
(5,851 posts)samnsara
(17,635 posts)Wicked Blue
(5,851 posts)Remember Freedom Fries?
BlackSkimmer
(51,308 posts)Very good.
edhopper
(33,615 posts)retread
(3,763 posts)OAITW r.2.0
(24,610 posts)And never looked back.
samnsara
(17,635 posts)NCjack
(10,279 posts)TxGuitar
(4,209 posts)and still vile.
GoCubsGo
(32,093 posts)Or, as I call it, "Freedom dressing."
raccoon
(31,120 posts)lame54
(35,321 posts)DFW
(54,437 posts)It is called "cocktail sauce" here in Europe, but it is the same vile stuff--little more than half ketchup and half mayonnaise. Nothing at all like what we serve with Shrimp cocktail.
I don't know where the name comes from, but like "German" chocolate cake is not at all German, and "French" toast has nothing to do with France, I have never seen "Russian" dressing in Russia. They probably would have declared war on the west long before now if they knew we were ascribing that awful stuff to them.
Celerity
(43,501 posts)similar to Thousand Island. In Germany and some other nations, a very similar sauce is called American dressing. Here in Sweden a similar dressing is called (again completely invented) Rhode Island. Russian dressing was called Russian because the first iteration in the US had small amounts of caviar.
Russian Dressing
Thousand Island
American Dressing (Germany, etc)
Rhode island (Sweden)
Cocktail Sauce
bif
(22,747 posts)Sort of like Freedom Fries when France refused to join us in invading Iraq.
Celerity
(43,501 posts)According to The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, the dressing's name comes from the Thousand Islands region, located along the upper St. Lawrence River between the United States and Canada. Within that region, one common version of the dressing's origins says that a fishing guide's wife, Sophia LaLonde, made the condiment as part of her husband George's shore dinner. Often in this version, actress May Irwin requested the recipe after enjoying it. Irwin, in turn, gave it to another. In another, second version of the story, Thousand Islands summer resident, George Boldt, who built Boldt Castle between 1900 and 1904 and who was proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, instructed the hotel's maître d'hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, to put the dressing on the menu in 1894 after he forgot dressing on salads and improvised with what ingredients were on hand at the time. A 1959 National Geographic article states, "Thousand Island Dressing was reportedly developed by Boldt's chef." Despite claims that he was involved in the introduction of the salad dressing at the Waldorf, chef Tschirky did not mention the salad dressing in his cookbook that was published during that time period.
When University of Wisconsin sociologist Michael Bell and his graduate students attempted to determine the origin of Thousand Island dressing in 2010, they found that the story differed among villages and islands in the Thousand Islands region. They discovered the existence of a third origin story in which the original recipe was based upon French dressing, which is supported by a recipe published in the 11th edition of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (1965). All the claims appeared to be based upon oral traditions without supporting written records.
According to Food & Wine magazine, the dressing was a traditional sauce from the late 19th century in the Thousand Islands region. The wealthy who visited the region carried bottles of the local sauce back to New York City, such as one variant found in Clayton, New York, called Sophia's Sauce found at a local hotel, Herald Hotel run by innkeeper Sophia Lelonde.
Some food writers advance the claim that the dressing was invented by chef Theo Rooms of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago during the same time period. The food historians at The Food Timeline point out that the earliest print reference to Thousand Island dressing appeared in 1912, and that recipes for different versions of the dressing begin to appear afterwards throughout the U.S.