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Potato Salad No.2
1 qt. cold boiled potatoes 1 pt. diced celery 1 cup peas 2 small cucumber pickles, minced olives, minced Dice potatoes, add celery and peas. Finely minced cucumber pickles and olives may be added. Combine with a liberal amount of French dressing flavored with tarragon vinegar and onion juice to taste; or with mayonnaise made with these seasonings. Either dressing makes an excellent salad.
A volume-measured potato salad from the camping chapter, built to be assembled from things that travel well. The dressing choice is left open, which is the only real decision to make.
- Translating the volume measuresThe quart is measured as cold boiled potatoes before they are diced, roughly 2 lb of potatoes bought unpeeled. A pint of diced celery is 2 cups, four or five ribs.
- Potatoes: boil whole, dice coldBoil in their skins until a knife slides in with slight resistance, then peel and dice once cool. Diced first, they waterlog and break down into paste when tossed.
- Dress while barely warmIf you are using the French dressing, add it while the potatoes still hold a little heat so they absorb it; the vinegar and oil go in far deeper than they will on cold potato. Mayonnaise should wait until everything is fully cold.
- The peasA cup of cooked or canned peas. Frozen peas thawed under warm water are better than either and need no cooking.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine grater and use the liquid and pulp that collects, a teaspoon or two. It gives onion flavour without pieces that turn harsh overnight.
- Olives are unquantifiedNo amount is given for the minced olives. A quarter cup of green olives suits this volume of potato; they are salty, so season the dressing after they go in, not before.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth seeking out for this. White wine vinegar with a few bruised tarragon leaves steeped in it will stand in, though an hour gives only a faint version of the real thing.
- Yield and holdingServes eight to ten as a side. Either version should be kept cold; a mayonnaise-dressed salad in particular should not sit out for more than a couple of hours in warm weather.
Potato salad dressed with oil and vinegar is the older of the two forms, and cookbooks of this period often offered both, as this one does. Onion juice and tarragon vinegar were common seasoning tricks of the era's salad chapters, prized because they flavoured a dressing without leaving anything to chew on.