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Рецепт The Original Recipe for Thousand Island Dressing
by Monte Mathews

I just came

back from the Thousand Islands, a natural wonder that occurs where the Great

Lakes pour into the St. Lawrence River.

These islands range in size from tiny outcroppings in the river to

islands where there are farms and dozens of families living on them year ‘round. Most, however, are home to seasonal summer homes

accessible only by boat. There are well

over a thousand of them, 1864 to be exact, scattered along a fifty mile

downstream stretch from Kingston, Ontario.

To qualify as an island, the land must be above water level all year

round, have an area of at least one square foot and support at least one living

tree. Those islands that are not a part

of the province of Ontario are all located in New York State. Boat tours leave from both sides of the

border, pointing out the homes of the rich and famous, who summered here at the

turn of the 19 th century.

Among those is one of the greatest rock piles I’ve ever seen, Boldt

Castle. It’s the subject of much legend

and romance. And it’s part of the

intrigue surrounding Thousand Island Salad Dressing.

Boldt Castle Recipes

for Thousand Island dressing are not quite as numerous as the islands

themselves but they do come close. Some use tomato

paste. Some throw in chili sauce,

ketchup or Tabasco. But it wasn’t hard

to find the original recipe for the dressing, which has none of the above. Amazingly, the very well known Inn where I

stayed did not serve anything approaching a proper Thousand Island

dressing. Instead they serve a version

from Kraft that has nothing to do with the original. For shame indeed! (Click this link for a review

of where I stayed http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g182143-d182840-Reviews-The_Gananoque_Inn_and_Spa-Gananoque_Ontario.html ). Once I got over the disappointment that a

local restaurant could not put together this amazingly easy and wonderfully

rich dressing, I couldn’t wait to make my own. The dressing was everything I’d

hoped: rich and creamy, full of old fashioned flavor, a wonderful topping to a

chilled wedge of iceberg lettuce. To the lettuce I added some halved grape tomatoes and a hearty sprinkling of crisp

bacon. About the only thing missing from my version of the salad was

Boldt Castle and the story of the Thousand Island dressing.

Sophie LalondeLegend has it that a woman named Sophia Lalonde invented a salad topping to serve

to her husband and fishing guide George’s clients. The islands are home to

Muskie, a game fish that is as much prized for its fight and its size as for

its flavor. Once the fishing is over,

the traditional Shore dinner is held.

It’s a rather amazing plate that's put together for this dinner: French

toast with maple syrup, salt potatoes, corn on the cob, Bacon and bread and red

onions and battered and pan-fried fish.

Finally there’s a tossed salad. It was to this salad that Sophie Lalonde, who lived on the US side of the islands, in Clayton New York, added her dressing.

May Irwin and the silver screen's

first kiss.

According

to local lore, an American actress named May Irwin and her husband,

were bowled over both by Mr. Lalonde’s fishing expertise and Sophia’s dressing. May Irwin has the distinction of being the

actress in the first movie kiss. But her second accomplishment, giving Thousand Island Dressing its name, is what she is even better remembered for. It’s said that the green sweet

pickle, the black olives and the red peppers stood in for the islands

themselves. With some degree of

logic, Ms. Irwin christened the concoction after its birthplace.

Things get slightly murky when a man named

George Boldt appears. Boldt was

penniless Prussian immigrant whose meteoric business success included building

and owning the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The wildly nouveau riche Boldt arrived in

the Thousand Islands on his yacht, accompanied by his wife Louisa. They immediately made plans to build the most

elaborate of castles, a great stone monument to themselves. Features included a replica of the Arc de Triomphe and the Alster Tower, a giant fortress that Boldt commissioned to look like fortifications on the Alter River of his native Prussia. Most unfortunately, Louisa Boldt died at age 45 before the castle was completed.

George Boldt, inconsolable at her loss, abandoned

the place altogether. But before he did, one version of the story has his yacht's chef throwing the dressing together because it was all he had to work with. Nonsense. I believe that was just to cover the fact that they stole Sophie Lalonde's recipe. This version is far more likely: May Irwin introduced Boldt to Sophie Lalonde’s dressing, which he

in turn introduced to his Chef, the famous Oscar of the Waldorf. Oscar put it

on the hotel menu and from then on, Thousand Island dressing became one of the

most popular salad dressings of all times.

Now

here’s the recipe. I used the most basic of

pantry items to make it. Supermarket sweet pickle relish and those terrible canned black olives, which

were surely the only ones available in Upstate New York in the 19 th century. No Kalamatas here, although I

couldn’t help thinking they would have been wonderful. It’s nothing like bottled Kraft. It’s not

McDonald’s special sauce. And it differs

from Russian Dressing which is made with ketchup. Thousand Island never should

be. The calorie count is almost exclusively from the mayonnaise. I use Hellmann’s Olive Oil Mayo, which

comes in at 60 calories a tablespoon. I can hardly call this salad calorie-conscious because I served it with those with crispy bacon bits. This is the original recipe and the

proportions are such that you could likely feed all the diners at the Waldorf with

half the hotel size. Served as a lunch or light supper, accompanied by some

crusty bread or whole grain rolls, this would be superb. Here’s the recipe:

Original Recipe for

Thousand Island Dressing

Time 20 minutes plus chilling

time ( which I didn't think was particularly necessary.) Yields 16 servings for the entire

recipe, 8 for the half recipe, which follows at the end of the instructions.