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Thousand Island dressing is a variety of salad dressing, a variant of Russian dressing, commonly made of mayonnaise, ketchup, and a mixture of finely chopped vegetables, most often pickles, onions, bell peppers, and/or green olives; chopped hard-boiled egg is also common.

It is used both in salads and as a sauce on sandwiches, especially in fast-food restaurants.

Thousand Island dressing has been cited in print since at least 1912, but there are multiple conflicting stories about its origins:

1. It was invented at Chicago's Blackstone Hotel in 1910.[1]
   
   
2. Sophia LaLonde invented it in the first decades of the 20th century, substituting mayonnaise for the yogurt used in Russian dressing, and added pickle relish, chives and sometimes chopped, hard-boiled eggs. The dressing was popularized by one of her dinner guests, actress May Irwin, who gave the condiment its name, after LaLonde's home, the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York and Eastern Ontario.
   
   
3. The name refers to the multitude of small specks of pickle usually found in the dressing.
   
   
4. George Boldt, of Waldorf-Astoria Hotel fame, popularized it by instructing his maitre d'hotel, Oscar Tschirky, to put the dressing on the hotel's menu. Boldt had a home called Boldt Castle on one of the Thousand Islands.

Thousand Island dressing is an ingredient in a reuben sandwich, along with corned beef, sauerkraut, and marble rye bread (although sometimes Russian dressing is used instead).

In the 1950s, Thousand Island dressing became a standard condiment, used on sandwiches and salads alike. It is widely used in fast-food restaurants.

• McDonald's special sauce for Big Mac hamburger sandwiches is similar to a sweet Thousand Island dressing.
• Arby's, a roast beef chain, uses Thousand Island dressing in their Market Fresh Reuben sandwich.
• The fast food chain Wendy's uses it on its promotional Wendy Melt.
• Steak n Shake, a combination diner/fast food restaurant chain, dresses the Frisco Melt, All-American Melt, Chicken Melt, and Turkey Melt with Thousand Island dressing.
• Corner Bakery uses Thousand Island on its "Turkey Derby" sandwich.
• Around half of the selections on the menu at Pizza Hut in Hong Kong use a Thousand Island dressing for the base, instead of traditional tomato sauce. [2]
• "Sandwich spread" sold by Kraft and other condiment makers is simply thicker Thousand Island dressing that can be spread on bread.
• Cooks in rural areas, where commercial salad dressings were slower to appear, often made a version of thousand island, with or without pickles, from ingredients which were commonly available. It was typically called simply salad dressing.

Thousand Island dressing is often used as a substitute for fry sauce, a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise.