Who invented potato salad

By Velma Yamashita. Combine cubed potatoes and chopped eggs. Add pickles, pimentos, olives. After completely combined, and salt, pepper and add mayonnaise mixing thoroughly. Arrange on a platter and decorate with pimentos and grated egg yolk if desired. Refrigerate and serve cold. They generally used more vinegar, as well as the grainy and sharper mustards of the day. Some assume that potato salad was introduced in the United States by German immigrants, so that the hot variety came first.

However, early American cookbooks leave the impression that many people preferred the French style. The French developed a cooler, i. Well, so what? We could say the same of macaroni and cheese. The kind of American, homestyle potato salad I make is both too northern and too new to qualify as a traditional southern comfort food.

In the first place, potatoes are more of a northern and western food. The leading potato states are Idaho, Washington, and North Dakota. Potatoes thrive in cooler temperatures, which is why they became a replacement crop in Europe during the cereal crop failures brought on by the Little Ice Age. The south, meanwhile, was more tied to an unrelated tuber, the sweet potato.

By the end of the century, mayonnaise had made it to America, and was beginning to be used in elite restaurants as a dressing for potatoes.

But that was homemade mayonnaise, i. Commercial mayonnaise, a safer product with a longer shelf-life, began to appear in the early s. So when did potatoes, mayo and mustard land in the same bowl? I glanced through some of my older cookbooks. In other words, it appears that potato salad as we know it is largely a postwar creation. It depends on commercial mayonnaise and yellow mustard, and on the availability of refrigeration.

If you eat candied yams, every day, drenched in brown sugar and butter, it might well kill you. In that context, potato salad qualifies as a festival food. Potato salad gets eaten by crowds, not just the immediate nuclear family, and so all of the things we joked about in the first piece come into play, such as wondering who made it, or debating a bad batch.

The moral of the story? Learn how to make it right. It also got me thinking about potato salad. Then I started seeing potato salad humor popping up in other places. He elevated the Potato Salad Issue to Potato salad year round is a thing. But, again, that was later on.

Or LOTS of aluminum foil. This also shows up in the memes:. The first issue here is not the taste but the safety. When it comes to potato salad, food safety is also a concern among those of us in the melanin-challenged community as well. Boiled potatoes were often combined with oil, vinegar, mustard, and herbs.

Current potato salad recipes vary from family to family, but there's usually one essential ingredient—mayonnaise. This condiment was invented by the French and introduced to the American market on a large scale around the s.

A more traditional, creamy recipe includes boiled potatoes, chopped celery, dried herbs, and mayonnaise. Nontraditional dishes include arugula and pesto or lemongrass and ginger potato salad. These incorporate Italian and Asian flavors to add a modern twist. This restaurant serves a range of slow-smoked meats like pulled pork and brisket.