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The Mysteries of Salad Dressing
Posted by Lidian on September 19, 2008
Tell me, was this stuff ever mysterious in the first place? I don’t think so! Even when I was a kid, and a lot of things were mysterious – French dressing was totally obvious. It’s orange, it comes in the bottle, you throw it on the iceberg lettuce wedge and voila! salad!
Other things were mysterious, yes. Like why there was a black-licorice Chuckle at all. Why L’Eggs tights were so uncomfortable (it’s like they gave up, design-wise, after they thought of an egg-shaped container). Why they stopped making chocolate No-Cal soda (that stuff was excellent).
And why, in the Ladies’ Home Journal, did the counselor always manage to happy things up for the “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” couple.
And why were the Scooby Doo gang (and Nancy Drew for that matter) always, always on vacation? During which there was an inevitable mystery to be solved. Doesn’t this make the concept of vacation kind of a moot point? If you are always going on vacation, does it not cease, technically, to be a vacation?
And furthermore – when can I test that theory?
Anyway…salad dressing. Yes. Back to it.
This French dressing does seem to be more of a vinaigrette than anything else. Which makes sense since the ad is for olive oil. I get it. No mystery there.
I still don’t understand what the black mask has to do with it, though.
Vallen said
The mystery might have been why Kraft made French dressing that neon orange color? So you could see it on the lettuce if you were eating in the dark, perhaps?
Erica said
OK, for this to work, you have to have the Andrew Lloyd Weber music in your head…
“THE PHAAAAAAAAAAANtom of the opera is theeeeeeeeere… inside… your salad dressing!!!”
Um, no, never mind
Tori Lennox said
LOL, Erica!
Yeah, French dressing, not so much mysterious. And good point about the Scooby gang and their perpetual vacation! And how did they afford to go on vacation so much? They didn’t seem to have jobs!
Bill said
Let’s see…
Salad dressing named after a city in Italy, but claiming provenance in another European country, with the mask of Zorro figuring prominently in the ad.
It’s a mystery to me.
My childhood memory of French dressing is eating at Frankie’s restaurant in Chick’s Beach. They brought the salad dressing selections in an aluminum contraption shaped like a Ferris wheel. Ooh la la.
PZR said
I always thought French dressing was just mayonnaise and ketchup.
Uh, oh. Perhaps there is a mystery, after all.
Brandon Burt said
I’m thinking that, in the 1940s and ’50s, the mystery of the dressing was in the fact that it was so mysteriously French–carrying with it all those exotic and (possibly) cryptoerotic Gallic connotations.
The mask is of the sort worn at those, er, naughty masquerade balls which we understand are so popular among the French. (A narrow strip of black velvet across the eyes disguises one’s high-ranking social identity so well that one can get away with all kinds of scandalous behavior!)
The effect on period housewives would have been, I think, most titillating. To have a similar effect on today’s jaded readership, the mask would have to be replaced by something like a black leather dominatrix outfit. (Because, of course, nothing sells salad dressing like stiletto heels, riding crops and fishnet stockings!)