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Hungarian Potato Salad
2 cups sliced cooked potatoes 1 small onion minced 1 pickled beet minced 1 cucumber sliced A Dutch herring 4 sardines 1 tablespoon minced boiled ham 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 1/2 cup vinegar Pick over and break into pieces the herring and sardines, mix all together and pour over the 1/2 cup of vinegar, garnish with walnut pickles.
A cold composed salad in the central European manner, dressed with straight vinegar rather than mayonnaise. The proportions are generous on the acid and light on everything sweet, which is how the style works.
- Dutch herringThis means salt-cured or lightly brined herring sold ready to eat, not fresh fish to be cooked. Look for maatjes herring, or use plain brined herring fillets from a jar; if you buy them in sour cream or dill sauce, rinse the dressing off first.
- SardinesTinned sardines were commonly oil-packed and firm. Drain them well, and lift out the backbone if the tin is not boneless, or the salad turns to paste when tossed.
- Walnut picklesPickled green walnuts, picked before the shell hardens and cured in spiced vinegar until black. They are still sold by British specialty grocers. Cornichons or pickled onions will stand in for the garnish without pretending to be the same thing.
- The vinegarHalf a cup of undiluted vinegar over two cups of potatoes is aggressive by modern taste, and the herring is already salty. Consider dressing with part vinegar and part of the herring's own brine or a spoonful of oil, and hold back the teaspoon of salt until you have tasted.
- PotatoesUse waxy potatoes, boiled in their skins and peeled while warm, then sliced. Warm slices absorb the vinegar; cold ones sit in it. Mealy baking potatoes will collapse under the mixing.
- CucumberSalt the slices for twenty minutes and pat dry before adding, or they will weep into the dressing and thin it.
- Resting and yieldThe salad is better after an hour in the refrigerator, and it feeds four as a first course or light lunch. Add the cucumber and the walnut pickle garnish just before serving so the slices stay crisp.
Salads built on cold potato, cured fish and beet run right across northern and central Europe, from the Russian and Polish herring salads to the German Heringssalat; the label "Hungarian" in American cookbooks of this period was applied loosely, and need not point to any documented Hungarian source. What marks this version as American is the assembly from shelf goods: tinned sardines, jarred herring, boiled ham from yesterday's dinner, and pickled walnuts from the store cupboard. A salad like this one asked nothing of the cook but a knife, a bowl and a well-stocked pantry.