This particular Historical Food Fortnightly challenge had to do with Picnic Food! Seems very fitting for the 4th of July and, as it worked out, this exact recipe was made and brought to a 4th of July picnic. But I would recommend it any time you have some cold boiled potatoes!
Now there are many different potato salad recipes out there, from hot German style potato salads from the 19th century, to the cold potato salads mixed with mayo and celery that grace the ready-made foods department of the supermarket. But I knew I wanted to do a recipe that would combine the vinegary and spicy German style with the cool, creamy mayo version we all know and love. And I found a few, but one in particular stood out to me, and the reason was not only the recipe.
A few months ago I stumbled upon a book that was presented by a favorite author of mine, Elizabeth Gilbert. I was intrigued because it was a cookbook that was written by her great grandmother, Margaret Yardly Potter (who Gilbert affectionately calls “Gima”), in 1947. Being someone who loves to collect older cookbooks I went straight to Amazon and bought “At Home on the Range”. Within weeks of receiving it I read it cover to cover, delighted with how the recipes intertwined with stories from her life. And, for someone who went from having cooks in her home to having to cook for herself, it was very interesting how she transitioned from having dinner parties with a butler to explaining how to feed and entertain the inevitable guests that suddenly appear at your beach house.
This cookbook is not organized like the normal, step by step, cookbooks we have today. Rather than having each chapter be about a certain topic (like appetizers, entrees, ect.), each chapter is about a certain activity or situation that involves certain dishes. Then, as each situation is explained, the recipes come out in short paragraphs, often with the author’s own witty insights and humor adding to the instruction. For example, the recipe starts out with this sentence. “The sticky heaps of jellied marshmallows and tinted fruit that appear on too many tables should be shudderingly avoided along with their sickeningly sweet mayonnaise, but my POTATO SALAD is something quite different.” (Potter, pg. 103) A sentiment I can heartily agree with!
Potato Salad
Chop 4 slices of bacon, brown, and reserve the grease. Drain the bacon and mix with 3 cups of diced cold boiled potatoes. Heat 3 tablespoons of the bacon grease, add 4 tablespoons of chopped chives- or 1 tablespoon of chopped onion- 1 tablespoon of parsley, an optional tablespoon of chopped fresh dill, 1 teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of black pepper, and ½ cup of vinegar. Pour this, while still hot, over the potatoes, cover and chill them, overnight if you wish, and when ready to serve mix ½ cup of mayonnaise with the potatoes and serve on lettuce garnished with more mayonnaise and perhaps stuffed or sliced hard boiled eggs, quartered tomoatoes, and olives. This, of course, is the perfect companion for slices of cold smoked ham and dill pickles.”
Potter, Margaret Yardley. At Home on the Range. (1947) Pg. 103
So, even though the recipe starts with 4 pieces of bacon, I started with boiling the potatoes because we need cold, boiled potatoes to dice. Now, not knowing how many potatoes would be necessary to make 3 cups of dice, I just went ahead and peeled a whole 5 lb bag of them. A little overkill doesn’t hurt anyone!
A little trick for boiling potatoes is to put some cold water into the pot you are boiling the potatoes in. That way, as you peel them, you can put them in the cold water and keep them from oxidizing. Then, once they are all peeled, you can put the pot on the stove and bring it to a boil. Then boil them till they are fork tender, or you can put a fork in it! With the size of these potatoes that took about 20 minutes. I then drained them, allowed them to cool, then put them in the fridge to get cold overnight.
So, it turns out, that a 5 lb bag of potatoes peeled, boiled, cooled and diced, comes out to about 6 cups. So I doubled the amount of all the ingredients to accommodate all the potatoes I cut up.
This also meant that I got to cook 8 pieces of bacon! Always better with more bacon!
Once the bacon was crispy and well drained of oil, I diced it up and put it with the cold diced potatoes. (I know this is backwards from the instructions, but I always find cutting the bacon after it is cooked ALOT easier. But do what is easiest for you!)
Then, I measured off the bacon grease. The recipe recommends 3 tablespoons of bacon grease, which means I would need about 6 tablespoons. All the bacon drippings from the pan came out to a little over a 1/4 of a cup, which was about the amount I needed. So, back into the pan went the grease to heat up again!
Before I cooked the bacon I diced up the herbs and measured out the salt and pepper. I knew that once the bacon was cooked it would be a pretty quick process. And it was, so I highly recommend prepping these beforehand. And, if I’m given the option, then of course I’m going to use dill! Yum!
Once the bacon grease was heated up I added the herbs, salt, pepper, and a cup of apple cider vinegar I had measured out. A word to the wise, your house will STINK after cooking vinegar. You’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson with the Two Shrubs: Act II, but obviously not.
Luckily, it only needed to be heated up, not boiled like the Shrub receipt. So it was not necessary to spray febreeze in the apartment.
Once heated I mixed the sauce, still hot, with the bacon and potatoes. It still had a prominent vinegar smell, but it looked promising! I covered it and let it sit in the fridge for several hours to cool and for the mixture to be absorbed.
Four hours later….
At this point the liquid is mostly absorbed but the potatoes are still firm. I feel like it could have sat for several more hours (or overnight) and still not have fallen apart.
This is where I strayed from the instructions. I still had a good 24 hours till my picnic, but I went ahead and added the cup of mayonnaise to the salad. I know that the author stated that the mayo should be added before serving, but I wasn’t going to have access to my kitchen for the next day so I decided to do it earlier.
There was still some vinegar at the bottom so the mayo lost a bit of its creaminess, but it wasn’t unpleasant in that the mayo/vinegar/herby sauce coated well over the potatoes and bacon.
So how did it taste?
It was very good! I personally would have added less vinegar, as it could be a bit overpowering, but the use of bacon grease certainly helped in giving it a bacon flavor. And, I will say, that when I make it again I will certainly wait till the last minute to add the mayonnaise. Though still very good 24 hours later, I found the prominent vinegar flavor got stronger the longer it sat, taking away from the creamy sweetness the mayo imparted to balance the dish.
But I highly recommend this if you are looking for a different type of potato salad dish this holiday weekend!
And I HIGHLY recommend you all read “At Home on the Range”! Even if you don’t normally read cookbooks, it is that entertaining!