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Potato Salad No. 1
1 qt. cold cooked potatoes, sliced 1 cucumber, sliced 1 cup diced celery 2 cups boiled dressing 2 teaspoons salt 1/4 teaspoon black pepper Arrange in alternate layers the potatoes, cucumber and celery, sprinkled with seasonings. Add the dressing; do not stir, but lift it carefully with forks.
A layered potato salad that relies on a cooked "boiled dressing" rather than mayonnaise, which is why it holds up on a camping trip. The whole technique is in the last line.
- Do not stirLifting with two forks keeps the potato slices whole and the cucumber crisp; stirring turns the same ingredients into mash bound with dressing. Work from the bottom of the bowl upward, in a few gentle motions, and stop while the layers are still visible.
- A quart of potatoesMeasured sliced and cold, that is roughly 1 1/2 lb of potatoes before cooking, or 4-5 medium. Boil them whole in their skins, cool completely, then peel and slice so they do not crumble.
- Boiled dressingThe period's cooked salad dressing: egg (often yolks), vinegar, mustard and a little flour or butter, thickened over hot water and cooled. Recipes vary, but it is generally tarter and thinner than mayonnaise. Two cups is generous for this volume; hold some back and add to taste.
- SaltingTwo teaspoons across a quart of potato is correct rather than excessive, since cold boiled potato absorbs a great deal of seasoning. Sprinkle it over each layer as directed instead of all at once.
- The cucumberSalt it separately, drain 15 minutes and pat dry if you want the salad to stay thick; otherwise it will weep and thin the dressing within an hour.
- Yield and keepingServes 6-8 as a side. Despite the cooked dressing, keep it below 40F and out of direct sun at a picnic, and discard leftovers that have sat out more than two hours.
Potato salad is commonly associated with German immigration to American tables in the nineteenth century, and by the time of the domestic-science cookbooks the cold, dressed style seen here stood alongside the warm vinegar-and-bacon style. What marks this version as belonging to its era is the boiled dressing, a cooked sauce of egg, vinegar and mustard that was a standard household salad sauce before commercial mayonnaise became cheap and widely available in the 1920s and 30s. Everything here can be cooked and cooled at home, assembled in a bowl and carried, and a cooked dressing was held to be steadier in the heat than a raw-yolk one. The numbering of the title suggests the book carried more than one potato salad.