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Potato Salad
1 quart cold boiled potatoes 1 onion 1/2 teaspoon salt parsley 1/2 cup French dressing Cut potatoes into slices or cubes; add finely sliced onion; mix with salt, chopped parsley and French dressing. Serve on lettuce leaves with boiled dressing.
A plain vinaigrette potato salad from an era when "French dressing" and "boiled dressing" were two distinct pantry staples, both assumed known. A few notes on measurements and the one step that decides whether it tastes of anything.
- A quart of potatoesVolume, not weight: about 1.5 lb of potatoes, or 4 to 5 medium, once boiled and cut. Waxy varieties hold their shape in slices; a floury baking potato will break down into mash as you fold in the dressing.
- Dress them warmThe recipe says cold boiled potatoes, likely using up potatoes already cooked. Potatoes take up vinaigrette more readily while still warm, so if you are cooking them for the purpose, consider cutting them hot and pouring the dressing over before they chill, then letting the salad come back to room temperature.
- French dressing, 1920s senseFrench dressing, period sense -- Not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today. It meant oil and vinegar, commonly around three to one though ratios varied, whisked with salt and pepper: for half a cup, about 6 tablespoons oil to 2 tablespoons vinegar.
- Boiled dressingA cooked, custard-style dressing thickened with egg and a little flour, sharpened with vinegar and mustard. It was the thrifty house alternative to mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is the nearest modern substitute, though it is richer and less sharp.
- The onionOne raw onion sliced fine into a quart of potatoes is assertive. Slice it paper-thin and rinse it in cold water for a few minutes to take off the harsh edge, or use scallions or a mild red onion.
- Season twiceHalf a teaspoon of salt is a starting point only. Boiled potatoes swallow salt and acid, so taste again once the salad has stood half an hour and correct with more salt and a splash of vinegar.
- YieldServes four to six as a side dish.
Potato salad is often traced in American cookbooks to German immigrant kitchens of the nineteenth century, where Kartoffelsalat was dressed warm with vinegar, oil and onion rather than with anything creamy, though vinegar-dressed potato salads circulated in French and English cookery as well. This version keeps that older shape almost intact: potatoes, onion, parsley, vinaigrette. The last line adds boiled dressing at serving. Boiled dressing itself is a marker of the period, a cooked flour-and-egg emulsion that predates cheap commercial mayonnaise and is common in general cookbooks of the era. That both dressings are named without recipes suggests the compiler expected the reader to find the standard formulas elsewhere in the book.