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Potato Salad
Cut up half a dozen firm cold boiled potatoes into nice slices, and slice up half that quantity of boiled beet-root, half their quantity of boiled Spanish onions and a small amount of pickled cucumber; arrange the slices of vegetables in artistic order on a salad dish, and prepare a sufficient quantity of salad-dressing with tarragon and salad oil, the former predominating, and season to the taste with salt and pepper; pour it over the vegetables, garnish the dish with slices of hard-boiled eggs, strewing a moderate quantity of powdered sweet herbs over the center, and serve. If desired, a small quantity of English mustard can be added to the dressing.
A composed salad rather than a tossed one, and the dressing is the part that will surprise a modern cook. A few notes before you start.
- The dressing ratio"Tarragon and salad oil, the former predominating" most likely means tarragon vinegar outweighing the oil — the reverse of the modern three-to-one vinaigrette. Read that way it makes a sharp, almost pickled dressing that suits boiled potato and beet; if that is not what you want, pull it back to roughly equal parts and taste.
- Tarragon here means vinegarTarragon here probably means vinegar -- Tarragon vinegar was a standard bottled item of the period, and "tarragon" in a dressing is most plausibly read as that rather than the fresh herb. Fresh tarragon leaves plus a plain white wine vinegar will get you close.
- Salad oilSalad oil of the period was usually olive, sometimes cottonseed. A mild olive oil is the honest substitute; a strongly peppery oil will fight the vinegar.
- QuantitiesSix potatoes, three beets' worth of slices, one to one and a half onions, and a small pickled cucumber. That is roughly a four to six person side. The recipe gives no dressing volume — about half a cup is enough to moisten without pooling.
- Spanish onions, boiledSpanish onion means the large mild yellow variety, and the instruction is to boil it, not use it raw. Simmer whole and peeled until just tender, cool, then slice; raw onion at these quantities would overwhelm the plate.
- Keep the beet separateBoiled beet bleeds into everything it touches. Dress and arrange the beet slices last, or plate them in their own band, unless you want a uniformly pink salad.
- Potatoes"Firm" is doing real work — use a waxy potato and boil it in the skin, then peel and slice while barely warm. A floury baking potato will collapse into the dressing.
- Powdered sweet herbsA dried mixture, typically parsley, thyme, marjoram and sometimes savory, rubbed through a sieve. A pinch of finely chopped fresh parsley and chives over the center does the same job with a better look.
- English mustardThe optional addition means dry mustard powder, not the prepared jarred kind. A quarter teaspoon whisked into the dressing is plenty; it also helps the oil and vinegar hold together.
The recipe is from Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf cook book. Vinegar-and-oil dressings for potato salad are associated with German Kartoffelsalat, which was long dressed that way rather than with mayonnaise. The layered, sliced presentation here — potato, beet, onion, pickle arranged "in artistic order" and garnished with egg — belongs to a service tradition in which a salad was built on the dish and carried to the table looking composed. The optional English mustard reflects the period's fondness for dry Colman's-style powder in dressings.