No. 2653

Potato and Herring Salad

Salade de Pommes de Terre et de Harengs

Cut in three-eighths of an inch squares, four pounds of potatoes cooked in salted water, half a pound of sour apples cut in four, peeled and minced, eight medium-sized vinegar pickles also minced, and four salted herrings boned and cut in three-eighths inch dice, previously unsalted in cold water. Put the potatoes into a bowl, season them with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, and when the seasoning is well mixed add the apples, pickles and herrings, a tablespoonful of finely chopped onion, and four spoonfuls of pickled beetroot cut in quarter-inch squares; mix all the ingredients thoroughly, then range the salad on a dish or in a salad bowl.

← No. 2652 Potato and Beetroot Salad Vegetable Salads — Cooked & Raw No. 2654 Hot Potato Salad →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's version of the northern European herring salad, scaled for a Delmonico's buffet. Nothing here is difficult, but the herring governs the whole dish.

Soak the herring firstSalt herrings are hard-cured and will overwhelm the salad if used straight from the barrel. Fillet them, then soak in cold water in the refrigerator 12 to 24 hours, changing the water two or three times; taste a corner before dicing. Ranhofer's "previously unsalted in cold water" is the hinge of the recipe.
If you cannot find salt herringBarrel-cured salt herring is still sold in Northern and Eastern European groceries. Matjes or schmaltz herring in oil can stand in without soaking; sweet pickled herring in cream or wine sauce cannot, as it drags sugar and dairy into a vinegar dressing.
Dress the potatoes warmBoil waxy potatoes in their skins, peel and cut while still warm, and season with the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper at that point. Warm potato absorbs dressing; cold potato sits in it.
The diceThree-eighths of an inch is a scant 1 cm, and the quarter-inch beet is about 6 mm. Ranhofer cuts the potato and herring to the same 3/8-inch dice; the apples and pickles he simply minces.
Sour applesA firm tart variety such as Granny Smith, Bramley or a russet. Modern dessert apples are bred sweet and will blur the balance against the vinegar.
Vinegar picklesSour cucumbers in brine or vinegar, not the sweet bread-and-butter type. Eight medium pickles is a substantial quantity once minced; judge by eye against the four pounds of potato.
"Four spoonfuls" of beetrootNo size is given here, though the same sentence specifies 'a tablespoonful' of onion. Read as tablespoons, four spoonfuls is roughly 1/4 cup of diced pickled beet. Add it last and fold gently, or the whole salad turns pink.
Yield and timingFour pounds of potatoes plus the garnishes serves 10 to 12 as a first course or buffet dish. It improves after an hour or two in the refrigerator and holds overnight, though the beet will bleed further.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its salad chapter is unusually cosmopolitan for an American book of that date. This one is not French despite its title: potato, salt herring, apple, pickle and beet is the standard combination of the German Heringssalat and the Swedish sillsallad, both long associated with Christmas and Easter tables. New York's German population in the 1890s was large enough that Delmonico's kitchen would have had no trouble sourcing barrel herring, and Ranhofer seems here to have taken such a dish into the house style, dicing it small, dressing it precisely and giving it a French name on the card. The apple is doing real work here — its acid and sweetness are the traditional counter to heavily salted fish, a pairing found across the herring-eating countries of the Baltic and North Sea.