A favorite salad dressing gets an organic no-sugar-added makeover

Thousand Island salad dressing has been a favorite since I was a kid. Yes, I like Caesar dressing (especially my homemade), classic oil and vinegar today. If given a choice with lettuce waiting to be dressed, it’s Thousand Island all the way.

My Mom’s homemade Thousand Island dressing, to which, oddly enough, she added cottage cheese, was my long-ago favorite.

I wondered where the original dressing began and found a story about it written by Amy Reiter at foodnetwork.com.

Amy wrote that it’s a tale of two theories. The first tale was about a dressing tossed together using available ingredients by a chef who worked in the castle-like home owned by George Boldt, the proprietor of New York’s Waldorf Astoria.

The story goes that Boldt’s chef, having forgotten to bring salad dressing on Boldt’s yacht, threw together some mayo, ketchup, pickle relish, chopped egg and Worcestershire sauce. Ta-da: Thousand Island dressing.

The second theory is that a recipe for Sophia’s Sauce, found in a safe in 1972, is the original from Sophia Lelonde, who owned a restaurant in Clayton, New York, and, interestingly, knew the Boldts.

In my first cookbook, I shared my recipe for low-fat Thousand Island dressing, using fat-free mayonnaise, a product that seems to have disappeared.

Today, my version reflects our time. Being soybean oil-averse, which eliminates most store-bought mayonnaise, I appreciate the potential health value of avocado oil-based mayo.

Yes, avocado oil mayonnaises are pricey, about three times the price of common mayo brands, due to the high cost of avocado oil.

Also, since I’m wary of anything with added sugars, especially high fructose corn syrup, I use a no-sugar-added organic ketchup for my dressing. That ketchup uses balsamic vinegar to round off ketchup’s acidic edge.

Sweet pickle relish is this dressing’s third most common ingredient. No surprise, sweet pickle relish has added sugar. I’ve tried a few sweet relishes that use commercial sugar substitutes and found them OK, but some artificial sweeteners also come with some concerns.

When organic Kirby cucumbers are available at my local farmers market (that’ll be soon), I make a quart of homemade sweet pickle relish sweetened with organic stevia. I shared my recipe for that relish nearly two years ago. You can find my sweet pickle relish recipe at dailyherald.com.

For the past two years, I have made Thousand Island dressings with my homemade relish, which works wonderfully well. That’s why I make a quart, which lasts nearly a year.

Feel free to use commercial, no-sugar-added sweet pickle relish if you don’t want to go to all that trouble.

Sarah’s Sauce calls for Worcestershire sauce, which surprised me. The next time I make my dressing, I will add a splash to see what difference it makes.

Give this a try.

• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at 1leanwizard@gmail.com.

Mauer’s Thousand Island Dressing

1 cup avocado oil (no-sugar-added) mayonnaise (such as Chosen or Sir Kensington’s brands)

3 tablespoons no-sugar-added tomato ketchup (such as Primal Kitchen)

3 tablespoons sugar-free sweet pickle relish

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

A few grinds of black pepper

Add mayonnaise, ketchup, pickle relish, mustard and black pepper to a medium mixing bowl and whisk together until completely combined. Transfer to a glass jar and refrigerate.

Makes slightly less than 1½ cups

Nutrition values per tablespoon: 75 calories (97% from fat), 8.1 g fat (1.1 g saturated fat), 0.4 g carbohydrates, 0.2 g sugars, 0 g fiber, 0 g protein, 11 mg cholesterol, 117 mg sodium.

— Don Mauer