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Potato Salad (Boil potatoes so that a fork)
Boil potatoes so that a fork will pass through them rather slowly, let them cool through or stand over night, then cut in small bits like dice. If onions are liked, chop one very fine and add to them. Make a dressing by taking one teaspoon ground mustard, and rubbing it well with a teaspoon of salt, a little white pepper and two raw eggs well beaten; add slowly one-half tea-cup best salad oil and two teaspoons vinegar, thick cream can be substituted for oil. Beat this until very stiff and turn over the potatoes. Small pieces of cold veal or beef is an improvement to it, some think.
A late-nineteenth-century supper salad that gives no potato quantity and assumes you can make mayonnaise by hand. The dressing is the whole of it; the potatoes are simply the vehicle.
- The hinge: add the oil drop by dropTwo raw eggs plus oil beaten "until very stiff" is mayonnaise, and mayonnaise breaks if the oil goes in fast. Whisk the mustard, salt, pepper and eggs together first, then dribble the oil in almost drop by drop until the mixture thickens, and only then in a thin stream.
- Raw eggs in an uncooked dressingNothing here is heated, so use pasteurized eggs, or pasteurized liquid egg, if the salad is for children, older guests, pregnant women or anyone immune-compromised. Keep the finished salad refrigerated and do not let it sit out on a supper table for hours.
- Half a tea-cup of oilNineteenth-century tea-cups are inconsistent; they are variously reckoned at anywhere from four to eight fluid ounces, so half a tea-cup may be anything from about 1/4 to 1/2 cup. At the lower end that is a small amount of oil for two whole eggs and the dressing will stay loose rather than stiff; add more oil if you want a properly thick mayonnaise.
- Ground mustardThis is dry English-style mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. Rubbing it with the salt, as directed, breaks up the lumps and lets it hydrate before the eggs go in.
- Potatoes cooked "rather slowly"Potatoes boiled so a fork passes through "rather slowly" -- The fork test means just done and still firm at the centre, not falling apart. Use waxy potatoes and chill them thoroughly, overnight if you can, as the recipe directs, before dicing; warm boiled potato crumbles under the knife and turns the salad to paste.
- VinegarTwo teaspoons is mild by modern taste. Add it at the end, taste, and increase until the dressing has an edge; cider or white wine vinegar suits it better than harsh distilled.
- Cream instead of oilSubstituting thick cream gives a softer, looser dressing rather than a true oil emulsion, and it sours faster, so dress the potatoes shortly before serving.
- Quantity and yieldThe recipe never says how many potatoes. As a rough guide, this much dressing will coat something in the region of 2 lb of boiled potatoes, serving four to six as a supper dish; judge by eye and make more dressing if it looks scant.
Potato salad in American cookbooks of this period is often traced to a German inheritance, carried into ordinary Anglo-American kitchens by the middle of the nineteenth century, and the optional onion and the mustard-sharp dressing are generally said to point that way. What distinguishes the version here is that it is bound with a raw-egg mayonnaise rather than one of the warm bacon-and-vinegar dressings found in German cookery; homemade mayonnaise was a mark of a good cook in the 1880s and 1890s, when it had to be beaten by arm. Supper was the light evening meal, usually cold, often built from what was already cooked, which is exactly why the recipe ends by suggesting scraps of yesterday's veal or beef be stirred through.