Potato Salad
3 cups diced warm boiled potatoes 1 hard boiled egg 1 tablespoon chow-chow 2 tablespoons grated onion 5 tablespoons Mazola 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper Lettuce 1 tablespoon minced green pepper 3/4 cup finely diced celery Combine the ingredients in the order given. while the potatoes are still warm. Chill and serve with a garnish of lettuce.
A plain oil-and-vinegar potato salad with no mayonnaise in sight, and one instruction that carries the whole dish.
- Dress the potatoes hotWarm potatoes absorb oil and vinegar; cold ones shed it and stay bland. Cut and dress them as soon as they can be handled, and let the seasoning soak in before chilling.
- MazolaA corn oil, then as now. Any neutral oil works — corn, sunflower, grapeseed — though a light olive oil is pleasant here.
- Chow-chowA pickled relish of chopped vegetables — commonly cabbage, green tomato, onion and pepper — in a sweet-sour or sometimes mustard brine; versions differ by region and are still sold in the American South and in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Substitute a tablespoon of mustard pickle relish, or sweet pickle relish with a pinch of dry mustard.
- Grated onionGrating rather than chopping releases juice into the dressing rather than leaving raw onion chunks. Two tablespoons is a modest amount of onion but assertive in flavour; scale back for a mild palate.
- PotatoesWaxy varieties (red, fingerling) hold their dice after boiling; russets crumble into the dressing. Boil whole in the skin, then peel and dice while warm.
- Order of combining"In the order given" means potato and egg first, then relish, onion, oil, vinegar and seasoning, then the raw vegetables. Fold rather than stir once the oil is in, or the potato edges break down.
- YieldAbout four servings as a side. It keeps two or three days refrigerated, but bring it back toward room temperature before serving — chilled oil dulls everything.
The tell here is the brand name in the ingredient list: Mazola corn oil, introduced by the Corn Products Refining Company in the early twentieth century, appears in place of a generic "salad oil." Booklets of this kind were often said to have been issued by manufacturers to teach American cooks that a refined vegetable oil could stand in for olive oil — by tradition described as costly and associated chiefly with immigrant kitchens — or for the butter and cream of older salad dressings. The salad itself belongs to the boiled-dressing-free branch of the American potato salad family, rather than to the mayonnaise-bound picnic version that later dominated. The chow-chow and diced celery are the American additions, and both were pantry staples of the period.