It involves an actress, a fisherman’s wife, and a hotel proprietor.
Thousand Island dressing—alternatively spelled as Thousand Islands—holds its place among grocery store shelves and as a condiment in a Reuben sandwich. It’s also been debated whether or not it’s a “secret sauce” in certain fast-food orders.
Nonetheless, the story behind this tangy, orange-looking dressing is multifaceted, involving oral histories mixed with some documentation.
However, one commonly agreed-upon theory about Thousand Island dressing is its place of origin.
Its name points to the Thousand Islands (or 1000 Islands), an archipelago of 1,864 islands bordering between the United States and Canada. These islands are speckled along the St. Lawrence River as it draws out from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario.
Made up of towns and villages, the Thousand Islands have been a summer tourism destination since about the 1870s. According to Thomas LaClair, who is the historian for the town of Clayton, the northern New York region began welcoming more of the well-to-do of The Gilded Age, which saw it as a getaway destination. It also became associated with outdoor recreation, especially as fishing grew in popularity as a recreational hobby.
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In response to this boom, many local fishermen started guiding businesses to take visitors along the St. Lawrence River.
“You have fishing guides that basically stood outside the hotels in the morning and advertised their services,” said LaClair. “They talked to the people that wanted to go fishing, and they decided on how long, how much, and where they were going to go so that they would head out.”
These excursions typically included a regional culinary tradition called The Shore Dinner. This longtime offering involves fishing guides setting up an outdoor dining experience on one of the region’s islands, complete with preparing a cooking fire and bringing along a picnic basket. The guides would clean and prepare freshly caught fish and put together other meal servings, such as a tossed salad.
Around the turn of the century, one fishing guide’s wife would introduce the first part of the Thousand Island Dressing’s story.
Sophia LaLonde was the wife of George LaLonde Jr., a fisherman who led these outings and prepared Shore Dinners for his anglers. His salads were topped with what was referred to as “Sophia’s Sauce,” a dressing that his spouse concocted.
Another person is said to have boosted Sophia’s recipe. The story goes that May Irwin, an actress, singer, and early cinematic star, came up to the Thousand Islands regularly in the summer.
George regularly took Irwin on fishing expeditions, and, like others, she tasted this salad dressing. Irwin also loved to cook and reportedly asked to have the recipe. Mrs. LaLonde is also said to have given a copy of this recipe to the Herald House in Clayton, where Irwin stayed and where George picked up guests for fishing expeditions.
Fast forward to Allen Benas and his wife, Susan Benas, who purchased the hotel in 1972. Now known as the Thousand Islands Inn, the Benas owned the property until it was sold in 2013. During this time, the couple learned about this special dressing from Robert Bertrand, the grandson of the hotel’s builder, Napoleon Bertrand.
“The recipe was just on a piece of paper in the safe,” remembered Allen. “And I took it out to our cook and said, ‘What’s this?’ And she said, ‘It looks like a recipe for Thousand Island dressing to me.’ And, so, we used it all along.”
According to Allen, the Herald House was the first place to serve the dressing outside of The Shore Dinners.
“Mrs. Bertrand put it on the menu as an additional salad dressing. So that’s where it started being available to the public,” said Allen.
Apparently, Irwin may have also passed on the LaLonde recipe to another person within her social circles. He was George C. Boldt, a hotelier who was the proprietor of The Waldorf Astoria in New York City. Today, He is known for Boldt Castle, a major tourist attraction in the Thousand Islands’ Alexandria Bay. Before this famed castle was built, Boldt and his wife, Louise, owned property within the region.
Boldt is said to have then passed this dressing on to his maitre d’ Oscar Tschirky and had him put it on the menu at his hotel. Tschirky became famous in his own right for authoring his own cookbook and devising recipes like Waldorf Salad
However, Boldt is the subject of a second salad dressing theory. It involves the Boldts on an afternoon cruise with their friends aboard their yacht, “The Louise.”
“When their steward did not have a dressing for the meal that he was preparing, he used ingredients that he had available to him,” explained Deputy Director Boldt Facilities Operations and Maintenance Keri Jobson.
This scenario would later result in what’s known as Boldt’s version called Thousand Islands Dressing. Its on-the-spot made recipe includes mayonnaise, sweet pickle relish, and a chopped hardboiled egg.
“Mr. Boldt enjoyed it so much that he began serving it at The Waldorf Astoria,” added Jobson.
Boldt Castle’s gift shop also sells bottles of this dressing.
While often not among these common stories, a sociologist offered a surprising tale from the region’s border. In 2010, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Michael Bell co-authored an academic paper featuring the dressing.
In this paper, Bell, whose relatives lived on the Canadian side of the islands, wrote that he heard an elderly neighbor named Maria Angebault claiming her deceased father was a chef for visiting British royalty but was hired away by Mr. Boldt. The paper also says that while working for Boldt, Angebault supposedly invented a French style dressing and sold the rights to the name to Tschirky, who then applied it to his own dressing.
Nonetheless, Sophia LaLonde’s recipe is still held in high regard. The LaLondes, Irwin, and Boldt are featured in many articles and videos reporting on the overall dressing’s history. For example, Syracuse filmmakers Eric J. Roberts and Andrea Reeves were inspired by their visit to Boldt Castle to make their 2012 documentary, “The Mysterious Origin of Thousand Island Dressing.” The two interviewed Allen Benas, chefs, and historians related to this topic, with each person delving into their perspective about each origin story.
“These differing accounts intrigued us enough to start our own research to uncover what the actual truth was, resulting in the creation of the documentary,” said Roberts.
The documentary also highlights a theory involving a dressing claim at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago by its chef, Theo Rooms. But his version came about after the LaLonde dressing.
Nonetheless, New York has an important piece to this puzzle, with the LaLonde recipe remaining tied to the hotel today. While keeping mum on its contents, Allen confirmed only mayonnaise and pickle relish among its other ingredients.
In 1990, the Benas began bottling and selling this Thousand Island Dressing recipe through this website. They confirmed with Cornell University’s laboratories to the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (now Cornell AgriTech) to make sure that the recipe was suited for mass distribution.
“They told us what preservatives and what quantity to add to ensure its safety without distorting the flavor,” said Allen.
Benas said he’s unsure about when Thousand Island dressing started being produced by major food companies, including Kraft, but he’s certain about another thing.
“It’s the only dressing ever named for a region of the United States.”
