Lucille Ball Put This Classic Condiment In Her Salad Dressing

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Celebrity recipes can often be a mixed bag. Chrissy Teigen's banana bread, for example, became internet-famous because of how unbelievably good it was. On the flipside, many people panned the unusual blend of ingredients in Dua Lipa's viral drink recipe, which mixed Diet Coke with pickle and jalapeño juices. "I Love Lucy" star Lucille Ball may no longer be around to get her fair share of notoriety for her cooking, but her recipe for salad dressing may have earned some side-eyes if she shared it. That's because it includes a condiment that gets a bad rap these days: ketchup.

The rest of Ball's recipe reads like your standard vinaigrette fare: sugar, water, vinegar, lemon juice, and salad oil form the base. Onion, garlic, salt, paprika, and mustard powder build the flavor profile, along with the ketchup. It was shared in the 1938 cookbook, "Famous Stars Favorite Foods," a collection of personal recipes from 236 old-school celebrities, including Ball, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, and Jimmy Stewart.

I tested the recipe myself and found that the ketchup added a pleasant fruitiness to the dressing. Coupled with the vinegar and lemon juice, it provided a nice tang that help balance out the sweetness that came with the whopping ⅞ cup of sugar Ball's recipe calls for. The ketchup also served to add a touch more thickness to the consistency, allowing the dressing to coat my greens more evenly. There's a distinct old-timey quality to the overall flavor profile, but that isn't necessarily due to the ketchup alone.

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Before anyone raises their eyebrows at the inclusion of ketchup in Lucille Ball's recipe, it's important to know that the condiment has a presence in several classic salad dressings. Thousand Island dressing, for instance, has used ketchup and mayonnaise as its base since its invention in the early 1900s. The condiment also forms the backbone of easy French dressing recipes (although some of the earliest variations didn't incorporate any tomato products).

Ketchup works well in these recipes because it already contains a lot of the layers you look for in a salad dressing. A good dressing balances sweet, salty, sour, and umami flavors. That is why you'll usually see recipes blending some type of acid like vinegar with a sweet component with honey, along with a mix of herbs and seasonings. One look at the ingredients that go into ketchup — vinegar, sugar, tomatoes, and seasonings — and you'll see that it's already got a good foundation for dressing.

Interestingly enough, it seems Ball really was a fan of these ketchup-using salad dressings. In 1978's "The Celebrity Cookbook," her recipe for Sunday Night Supper included a simple iceberg lettuce salad using your preference among three different dressings. Two of those were the aforementioned Thousand Island and French dressing, with Roquefort being the only non-ketchupy option.