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Potato Salad (Boil and mash six large)
Boil and mash six large potatoes. Mash with butter, salt, and a little milk, and beat until light. Add seven tablespoonfuls of chopped celery, six tablespoonfuls of cucumber pickle, four chopped onions. Boil five eggs hard and mash the yolks with one tablespoonful of mixed mustard with a little vinegar, one tablespoonful of sugar, one-half pint of vinegar, pepper and salt to taste. Cut up the whites of the eggs and mix all well together; add a little more vinegar if too stiff. -Mrs. R., Kentucky.
One quart mashed potato.
A mashed-potato salad rather than a cubed one — closer to a dressed potato purée, and it depends entirely on how much vinegar you let in. Read the quantities before you start pouring.
- The hinge: add the vinegar by degreesHalf a pint is a full cup, and combined with the pickle it will turn a quart of mashed potato into a sharp, loose paste. Work the yolk mixture in a few spoonfuls at a time, tasting, and hold the rest back; the closing line about adding "a little more vinegar if too stiff" shows it was meant to be judged by feel.
- "Mixed mustard"Period shorthand for prepared mustard already blended with liquid, as opposed to dry mustard powder. A plain yellow or mild English prepared mustard is the right register here.
- Cucumber pickleChopped pickled cucumber; either a sweet or a sour pickle would suit the dressing. Six tablespoons, drained, is a scant half cup.
- Four chopped onionsGenuinely ambiguous. Four full-sized onions would overwhelm a quart of potato; the proportions suggest small green onions or very small pickling onions. Start with two tablespoons of finely chopped mild onion or a bunch of scallions and adjust.
- PotatoesSix large potatoes yields roughly the stated quart mashed. Use a floury or all-purpose potato and mash while hot with the butter and milk; a cooled potato absorbs dressing poorly and turns gluey when beaten.
- Butter and milk unquantifiedKeep both light — about 2 tablespoons butter and a few tablespoons of milk. The dressing brings a cup of liquid of its own, so a wet mash leaves you with soup.
- Yield and servingOne quart, which will serve six to eight as a side. The recipe gives no resting instruction, but a spell in the cold will let the vinegar and onion mellow and firm the salad up.
Potato salad in American cookbooks of this period splits broadly into two camps: the German-descended warm salad dressed with vinegar and bacon fat, and the cold, egg-and-mustard-dressed version that eventually became the picnic standard. This recipe sits oddly between them and adds a third idea -- mashing the potato outright rather than slicing or dicing it, a treatment that suits leftover potatoes or a cook wanting something spreadable. The dressing is a raw variant of the boiled dressing found throughout salad chapters of the period: hard yolks, mustard, sugar and vinegar beaten smooth, in place of mayonnaise. The attribution to "Mrs. R., Kentucky" points to a compiled cookbook gathering recipes from named contributors, with the uneven measurements left as received.