No. 2654

Hot Potato Salad

Salade de Pommes de Terre Chaudes

Cook twenty potatoes, either in water or steam, leaving on their skins; drain as soon as done, peel and cut into slices; lay them in a bowl with two or three gills of boiling broth (No. 194a) poured over, season with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, and add two spoonfuls of finely chopped white onion. This salad can be served with roast veal, lamb or mutton.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A plain warm potato salad from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), dressed while hot so the potatoes drink the broth. Two things decide whether it works: the potatoes must be sliced hot, and the broth must be boiling when it goes on.

Scale it downTwenty potatoes is restaurant quantity — roughly 5 to 6 lb, serving 12 to 16. A quarter of the recipe (5 potatoes, about 1/3 cup broth) suits four people.
GillsA gill is 1/2 cup, so two or three gills is 1 to 1 1/2 cups of broth for the full twenty potatoes. Add it gradually; you want it absorbed, not pooling.
No. 194 aThe cross-reference is to one of Ranhofer's broths; the page itself does not say which. Any good unsalted stock works, but season at the end — reduced commercial broth will oversalt the dish.
Which potatoA waxy variety (Yukon Gold, red-skinned, fingerling) holds its slices. Russets will collapse into mash once hot broth hits them.
Skins on, then hotBoiling in the skin keeps the flesh from waterlogging. Peel and slice while they are still too hot to handle comfortably — hot potato absorbs the broth and vinegar, cold potato does not, and this is the whole point of the dish.
Dressing proportionsRanhofer gives no ratio. Start with three parts oil to one part vinegar, about 1/3 cup oil and 2 tablespoons vinegar per 5 lb of potatoes, and correct after the broth is absorbed.
The onion"Two spoonfuls" of chopped white onion for twenty potatoes is restrained by modern taste. Scale to about 1/2 teaspoon per potato, and rinse the chopped onion in cold water if it is fierce.
ServingServe warm, not hot from the pan and not chilled. It sits happily for half an hour off the heat; refrigeration sets the oil and dulls it.

A Little History

Warm potato salad dressed with hot stock, oil and vinegar rather than mayonnaise is the older European form, and Charles Ranhofer — chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years — includes it here alongside a more elaborate truffled version nearby. The technique of dressing potatoes hot is generally traced to German and Alsatian practice, and it is often said to have had a place in French professional cookery as salade de pommes de terre chaudes. Ranhofer's pairing note is worth reading as a period instruction: a warm, sharp, starchy salad was understood as an accompaniment to roast veal, lamb or mutton, not as a picnic dish.