Home › Salads and Dressings › Potato Salad
Potato Salad
3 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, 1 teaspoonful of salt, 9 tablespoonfuls of olive oil, I good-sized onion, 4 sprigs of parsley.
Pare and boil the potatoes, and while boiling prepare the dressing. Put the salt and pepper in a bowl, add gradually the oil, then the vinegar, stir until you have a perfect emulsion. Slice the onion very, very fine, and as soon as your potatoes are done (not soft) remove the skins and cut them into slices. Cut them in the same bowl with the onions. Pour over while hot the dressing, and turn upside down carefully with a fork without breaking the potatoes. Dish, sprinkle over the parsley chopped fine, and stand in a cold place for one or two hours. Garnish the dish with parsley and pickled beets cut into fancy shapes.
Sardines may also be used as a garnish, and for variety, a teaspoonful of anchovy paste may be added to the dressing. It is a great improvement.
A hot-dressed German-style potato salad with a plain oil-and-vinegar emulsion. The ingredient list omits the potatoes themselves, so you are working from the method.
- The missing quantityNo weight of potatoes is given. The dressing here — 9 tablespoons oil to 3 of vinegar, about 3/4 cup total — will coat roughly 2 lb of waxy potatoes, serving four to six. Scale up if you want them wetter.
- Dress them hotThis is the hinge. Warm potato absorbs the vinaigrette; cold potato repels it and the dressing pools at the bottom of the bowl. Slice and dress the moment they are drained, and let the salad come down to cool on its own.
- Pare, then peel againThe original tells you both to pare the potatoes before boiling and to remove the skins after. Boiling them in their skins is the better reading: they hold shape and take up less water. Peel while hot, holding them in a towel.
- "Done (not soft)"Take them out while a knife meets slight resistance at the centre. Use a waxy or new potato; a floury baker will collapse when you turn the salad with the fork.
- PepperPepper appears in the method but not in the list. A generous 1/4 teaspoon, freshly ground, in the bowl with the salt.
- The emulsionSalt and pepper first, then the oil beaten in gradually, then the vinegar, is the old order and it does hold briefly, but with no mustard or egg it will separate within minutes. Whisk again just before pouring, or add 1/2 teaspoon of mustard as insurance.
- The onion"Very, very fine" is not decorative — raw onion sliced thick will dominate a salad that rests two hours. A mandoline or a very sharp knife; a sweet or red onion is kinder than a yellow storage onion.
- Anchovy and sardineThe teaspoon of anchovy paste is worth taking seriously; it reads as savoury depth rather than fish. Anchovy paste is salty, so cut back on the teaspoon of salt if you use it.
- RestingOne to two hours in "a cold place" means cool, not fridge-cold. Refrigeration firms the starch and mutes the dressing; serve at room temperature.
Potato salad dressed hot with oil, vinegar and raw onion is the older European form, and cookbooks of the late nineteenth century are often said to label it German or Continental, distinguishing it from the mayonnaise-bound American salad that overtook it in the twentieth century. The garnishes — pickled beets cut in fancy shapes, sardines laid over the top — belong to a period when a dish arriving at table unornamented was considered unfinished, and the 3:1 oil-to-vinegar proportion given here is the same ratio still used for a plain vinaigrette.