This put up initially appeared in an version of What’s the Distinction?, a weekly e-newsletter for the curious and confused by New York Metropolis author Brette Warshaw. Eater will likely be publishing all editions that parse food-related variations, although these hardly scratch the floor of the world’s (and the e-newsletter’s) curiosities: Signal as much as get What’s the Distinction? in your inbox or compensate for the total archive.
What’s the distinction between…
Russian Dressing and Thousand Island Dressing?
In the event you’ve frequented a salad bar not too long ago — or returned from a fast jaunt from, say, the Fifties — you could recall a bowl or two of pink, florescent dressing with some chopped-up stuff in it. Perhaps you dolloped a few of it onto your plate of greens, or had a white-tocqued chef on the meat-carving station slather it on a sandwich for you. In any case: Was it Russian dressing or Thousand Island? If it wasn’t slapped in a bottle with a label, would you be capable of inform the distinction? Let’s discover out.
Reading: Russian dressing vs thousand island
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Russian dressing is made with a mayonnaise-ketchup base, usually livened up with pickle relish, Worcestershire sauce, ready horseradish, and lemon juice and seasoned with paprika, onion powder, and/or mustard powder. It’s spicier and fewer candy than Thousand Island, with a extra advanced, nuanced je ne sais quoi. Some say it acquired the “Russian” in its title as a result of it as soon as contained caviar: based on a 1957 New York Occasions article, an early model of the dressing in Larousse Gastronomique known as for mayonnaise, tinted pink with the poached coral and pulverized shell of a lobster, seasoned with black caviar and salt. In any case, the creator of the dressing, a person named James E. Colburn of Nashua, New Hampshire (not Russia), offered a lot of it that he acquired “a wealth on which he was able to retire.” Jealous.
Thousand Island dressing additionally has a mayonnaise-ketchup (or chili sauce) base; contains pickle relish and/or different chopped greens, akin to pimientos, olives, and onions; and has some extra rogue, recipe-dependent components thrown into the combination, like parsley, chives, or scorching sauce. The large differentiator, nevertheless, is the addition of a chopped up hard-boiled egg, which acts as a thickener and binds the components collectively. The title comes from the area between northern New York state and southern Ontario, which is the place it was invented in round 1900 — almost certainly at one of many resorts up there that metropolis people frequented in the summertime.
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As of late, you’re extra prone to discover the 2 dressings on sandwiches fairly than salads —with Russian sometimes on a Reuben, and a Thousand Island-type unfold used because the “secret sauce” on a Huge Mac. However sadly, based on the Washington Put up, “an examination of menus around the country shows that Russian dressing has all but disappeared from America’s national consciousness.” What’s extra — and we simply love this form of factor at What’s the Distinction HQ — what is definitely Russian dressing would possibly now be labeled as Thousand Island. “Sometimes it’s easier to just make things quickly understandable for the customer, to avoid wasting time explaining things,” Nick Zukin, co-author of The Artisan Jewish Deli at House, informed the Put up. “Even if you made what was essentially a Russian dressing, you might call it Thousand Island just to avoid headaches.”
• What’s the Distinction Between Russian and Thousand Island Dressing? [wtd]
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