Home › Salads and Salad Dressings › Potato Salad
Potato Salad
Cut cold boiled potatoes into slices and mix with them 2 minced raw onions, and 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Add 2 tablespoonfuls of salad-oil mixed with 1 dessertspoonful of vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir lightly together, then set in the ice-box for an hour. When ready to serve, stir in 2/3 cupful of mayonnaise, and garnish with 2 hard-boiled eggs and 6 stoned olives.
A two-stage dressing: the potatoes are seasoned warm-of-mind with oil and vinegar, chilled, and only then bound with mayonnaise. That order is the whole point of the recipe.
- Dress the potatoes firstThe oil-and-vinegar step gives the freshly cut slices a chance to absorb the seasoning before the mayonnaise goes on. Bound in mayonnaise from the start, the slices would be coated rather than seasoned, and the interiors would stay bland.
- DessertspoonfulA dessertspoon is between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, reckoned at 2 teaspoons. So roughly 2 tablespoons oil to 2 teaspoons vinegar, a 3:1 ratio.
- Two raw onionsTwo modern yellow onions minced raw would overwhelm the dish; use one small onion or two shallots, and rinse the mince in cold water if you want the bite softened.
- Ice-box hourAn hour in the refrigerator is the minimum, not a ceiling. The salad is better after two, though the parsley will dull.
- Potato choiceThe potatoes are boiled, cooled and sliced, which favours a waxy variety that holds its shape. Floury baking potatoes will collapse into the mayonnaise.
- Stoned olivesStoned means pitted. Buy them whole and pit them yourself if you want firmer fruit than the pre-pitted sort.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of potatoes at all. Two-thirds of a cupful of mayonnaise, plus the oil and vinegar, would be generous for anything much under a couple of pounds of cooked potatoes, so scale by eye.
- KeepingA mayonnaise-bound potato salad should not sit out. Refrigerate it up to the moment of serving and return leftovers promptly.