Don't Come In Yet, We're Dressing!

"And your salad dressing, please?"

My default is usually bleu cheese, sometimes pepper parm ranch or creamy Italian. 

But there are two sentences no one has ever heard me say, and they are:

"What time does Oprah come on?"

and

"Make mine French dressing, please"

I even keep a bottle of 1000 Island dressing handy for Reuben sandwiches, but I'm certain I have never poured gloppy orangish French dressing on any salad of mine. So the fact that it has been regulated by your vigilant federal government for 70 years, and no longer will be, is immaterial to me.

"When the standard of identity was established in 1950, French dressing was one of three types of dressings we identified," the Food and Drug Administration said in the final rule posted in the Federal Register recently.  The other two were mayonnaise and just "salad dressing."

This is fascinating to know: French dressing is the only pourable salad dressing that has to live up to federal standards requiring it to contain oil, acidifying ingredients and seasoning. If you shop for breads, jam, and juices, those items stand on their own, but for reasons I will never get, French dressing has always had to toe a very precise line.

But this is weird:  none of those standards concern having a reddish-orange color or even a trace of tomato.

In 1998, the Association for Dressing and Sauces, an industry group that has kept an eye on the salad dressing tureens of our land since 1926, asked for the revocation of these standards. As reason, they cite the vast array of other dressings on the shelf - among them ranch, bleu cheese, peppercorn and Italian. The now-overlooked French has been "marginalized and is no longer a baseline for other dressings," the association said.

So the FDA acted hastily, ruling just 22 years after that request to remove the stipulations making French dressing French dressing, "in the name of 'flexibility' and 'innovation.'  

1960 advertisement

 

"There are a wide variety of French-style dressings on the market, and these will continue to be available based on consumer demand," the AFDAS said in a public statement. 

If you're in the habit of dousing your Romaine with Orange Wishbone, the good news is, the new rule will not require manufacturers to change their practices a bit. Enjoy!