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Hot Potato Salad
Cut into dices sufficient bacon to measure 2/3 of a cupful and fry slowly until lightly colored.
Skim out the bacon and in the fat fry 2 tablespoonfuls of chopped onion; as it begins to color add 3 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a dash of salt and cayenne and 2 tablespoonfuls of beef broth or hot water. Have ready 3 pints of hot diced boiled potatoes, pour over them the hot dressing, add the bits of bacon, toss for a moment and turn into the salad bowl.
A German-style hot bacon dressing, and it works exactly as written. The only real risk is treating it like a cold potato salad.
- Everything must stay hotThe dressing is poured over potatoes that are still hot from the pot, so that they absorb the vinegar and fat rather than sitting in it. Cook the bacon and onion while the potatoes boil, and dress them the moment they are drained and cut.
- 3 pints of potatoesThat is 6 cups diced, from roughly 2 lb of potatoes. Waxy varieties hold their dice; russets will slump into something closer to a warm mash, which some cooks prefer.
- 2/3 cupful of baconAbout 4 oz of slab bacon or thick-cut rashers, cut into small dice. Modern supermarket bacon is often wet-cured and can throw off more liquid, so render it gently and pour off any excess if you end up with more than about 4 tablespoons of fat.
- Fry slowlyThe instruction is deliberate. Slow rendering gives you clear fat and crisp dice; high heat browns the outside before the fat is out and leaves the bits tough.
- The dressing quantity is smallThree tablespoons of vinegar and two of broth for six cups of potato reads sparse, and it is by modern taste. Cider or white wine vinegar is probably closer to what was meant than distilled; taste after tossing and add a spoonful more vinegar and salt if it is flat.
- Beef brothIn a period kitchen this could well have been leftover pot liquor from a boiled joint. Any decent stock does the job, and the recipe itself offers hot water as a substitute.
- CayenneA dash means a pinch, not a teaspoon; it is there for warmth behind the vinegar rather than heat you notice.
- Yield and servingSix to eight as a side dish. It should go to the table at once, warm, and does not reheat well; the potatoes turn pasty and the bacon softens.
Hot potato salad dressed with bacon fat and vinegar came to American cookbooks through German immigrant kitchens, where it is generally traced to the Kartoffelsalat of the south and southwest of Germany, and it spread widely through Pennsylvania and the Midwest in the nineteenth century. It is a frankly economical dish: potatoes were among the cheapest bulk foods available, and a few ounces of bacon plus a splash of vinegar turned them into something that ate like a dish rather than a filler. The economy is in the method as much as the shopping list, since the bacon fat becomes the salad oil and a spoonful of broth becomes the rest of the dressing, so nothing from the pan is thrown away.