Mason-Dixon Recipes

Potato Salad

At the station, he asks me if I have any aliases. And I was just being smart and said, "Yeah, they call me ... Tater Salad." Seventeen years later, I'm handcuffed to a bench with blood comin' out my nose, this cop comes up to me and says, "Are you Ron 'Tater Salad' White?" You caught me! You caught the Tater!

         — Ron White, American Comedian

All through history, potato salad recipes have been a good way to use leftover cooked potatoes. Potatoes had been popular throughout Europe since the 1500s when the Spanish brought them back from South America. There were different recipes for this vegetable as well as different preparation techniques according to local culinary practices.

An early potato salad recipe, dating back to 1597, calls for potatoes to be boiled in water or wine, or simmered with prunes, and then dressed with vinegar, oil and salt. Modern potato salad was once made with French dressing but later recipes, from the 1940s and onwards, usually recommended mayonnaise.

INGREDIENTS

5 lbs potatoes
5 hard-boiled eggs, diced
4 ribs celery, diced
1 cup mayonnaise
4 tsp prepared mustard
4 tsp sugar
2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp celery seed
1 tbsp dried parsley flakes
¹/₂ tsp salt

DIRECTIONS

Cook potatoes, drain and refrigerate. When cool, peel and cube. Mix ingredients for dressing in a separate bowl and then toss the potatoes. Makes about 1¹/₂ quart.

For a nice alternative, try the Old Fashioned Cooked Dressing that was used before mayonnaise (found in this cookbook).

Makes 1 gallon.

Return to Mason-Dixon Recipes