German Potato Salad: Recipes & Community Identity
When it comes to community and culinary identity, it is often the dish of a certain city that defines the people who live there.
For example, consider Milwaukee and German Potato Salad. According to Milwaukee Journal food editor Peggy Daum: “If you are making German potato salad, you already know how. The right way to make it is the way your mother and grandmother made it. You may argue about it with someone down the block, but you don’t call me.” (Dennis Getto, “Daum Retiring as Food Editor,” Milwaukee Journal, Feb. 17, 1988)
This was further proven when no recipe for the popular dish was included in The Best Cook on the Block Cookbook. The cookbook was a collection of recipes submitted by Milwaukee home cooks as part of a weekly column in the Milwaukee Journal.
Daum, who was born and raised in Milwaukee, shared a childhood story regarding the dish in the 1984 cookbook, Food Editors’ Hometown Cookbook. The book was a fundraiser for M.A.D.D.
According to Daum: “I was eleven or so before I knew that any other kind of potato salad existed. That’s when I saw an egg-and mayonnaise version at a Girl Scout potluck supper and said: “What funny potato salad. Unfortunately, I was speaking to the Scout whose mother had prepared it. I’ve learned to like a number of potato salads since, but German Potato Salad is still my favorite.” (pg 32)
The image above is my take on “Carol’s Real German Potato Salad,” from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s food section.
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