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Potato Salads
The potatoes should be boiled with the skins on and the skins should not be removed until they are cold. Do not steam or they will be mealy.
Combinations or variations of potato salad are comparatively limited. They are generally sliced or cut into cubes and served on lettuce leaves with French dressing and a garnishment of hard-boiled egg. A mixture of beets and potato or of chopped Imported Pompeian Olive Oil is prescribed by many leading Physicians as a tonic and tissue builder.
celery and potato may be served with mayonnaise.
Another combination is of sliced or of cubed potato with raw cabbage in slaw form served with either mayonnaise dressing or French dressing. Or this same combination may be made of the cabbage in slaw form with mashed potatoes.
The addition of chopped parsley to any form of potato salad lends a touch of flavor and of color. The use of sliced onion or onion juice is almost essential to a good potato salad. Celery seed also helps the flavor.
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This is a template rather than a fixed recipe: one technique for the potatoes, then a short list of combinations. The text also carries an advertising line for Pompeian olive oil that the typesetter dropped into the middle of a sentence, splitting "a mixture of beets and potato or of chopped celery and potato."
- The hinge: dress the potatoes warmThe hinge: warm versus cold — the instruction to boil in the skins and leave them on until cold keeps the flesh from waterlogging, but cold potato absorbs little dressing. Note that this departs from the page, which says plainly not to remove the skins until the potatoes are cold. If you want the dressing to soak in, peel and cut once cool enough to handle, pour the French dressing over while the cubes are still warm, and let them stand before any mayonnaise goes in.
- "Do not steam or they will be mealy"Some modern cooks do prefer steaming, so the direction may read oddly. The point here is texture for salad: a floury potato collapses into the dressing. A waxy or medium-starch variety — red-skinned, fingerling, Yukon Gold — boiled at a bare simmer until a knife slides in with slight resistance will hold its shape.
- French dressing, 1910 senseFrench dressing, period sense — not the sweet orange bottled dressing. It means a simple vinaigrette, roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken fresh.
- Onion juiceA period staple, made by halving an onion and rasping the cut face on a grater or pressing it against a reamer to collect the liquid. A teaspoon or two gives onion flavor without visible pieces; grated onion squeezed in a cloth does the same job.
- Mashed potato and slawThe last variation — cabbage slaw folded into mashed potato — reads oddly now but is essentially a dressed potato purée with raw crunch. Keep the mash stiff and unbuttered, or it turns to paste against the moisture the cabbage releases.
- Quantities and yieldNone are given. As a working ratio: 2 lb potatoes, 1 stalk celery or 2 medium cooked beets, about 1/2 cup dressing, 2 hard-boiled eggs for garnish, serving four to six.
- Beets and potatoCook and dress the beets separately, then combine just before serving unless you want the whole bowl stained pink.
- Celery seedPotent and slightly bitter in quantity. A quarter teaspoon for 2 lb of potatoes is enough; crush it lightly to release the oil.
This page appears to come from an early twentieth-century printed source carrying olive oil advertising — possibly one of the recipe booklets issued by companies such as Pompeian, though the stray line of ad copy about oil as "a tonic and tissue builder," printed mid-sentence, is equally consistent with a cookbook or magazine page that carried advertising alongside its text. Either way, it shows what such pages were for. American importers were then working hard to sell olive oil as a table ingredient rather than a pharmacy item, and salad dressing was the wedge; the health claims on the page reflect promotional language of the era, not evidence. The potato salad itself sits between two traditions: the German-derived warm salad dressed with vinegar and onion, and the mayonnaise-bound American picnic salad that was spreading fast as commercial mayonnaise became available. The author's remark that potato salad variations are "comparatively limited" is a fair reading of what was in print at the time, before the sweeter, more heavily dressed versions that later came to define the dish in the United States.