Nostalgia Cooked
June 23, 2026
No. 3

“Hands, please”

The ingredient a disastrous hollandaise taught me to respect, and how to use it without ruining a relationship; the strange story of how potato salad was sold as old fashioned before it had even become potato salad; and three things worth your time this week, including how ranch dressing quietly conquered the World Cup.

Coffee, then read on.

— Chef Tim

I’m going to get nostagic for a second. Right around this time, many years ago, was the first time I cooked for my girlfriend, now wife. It’s a disaster I choose to celebrate every year.

Eggs Benedict was her favorite breakfast dish, and she claimed only one person could actually make it correctly (some diner owner named Leo). Looking back, I was cocky. I was also wrong and acid was my downfall.

Leo wasn't clarifying butter themselves (Most likely). He definitely wasn't adding a hint of nutmeg, a dash of paprika, or using pasteurized yolks to create the perfect fluffy hollandaise. And he was almost certainly not treating lemon juice like the secret ingredient that would make everything better. I was and that decision turned what should have been a rich, silky hollandaise into a sharp, mouth-puckering lesson.

My hollandaise was so aggressively acidic that took seven years before she trusted me enough to make her another one. It was my first real lesson in acid: too little and food tastes flat, too much and it's all you can taste. The right amount, however, can completely transform a dish. This is the lesson I use every day.

Last week, I wrote about salt being one of the most important tools in a cook's arsenal. Acid belongs in that same conversation. There's a whole world beyond the bottle of white vinegar your grandmother kept above the kitchen cabinet since 1992. You just have to find the right one.

Here are some of my favorites:
Japanese Brown Rice Vinegar
Italian Red Wine Vinegar
Japanese Citrus

As we all prepare for that extra scoop of potato salad at our upcoming July 4th BBQs, here’s a story to tell over the grill.

Every year, visitors climb a hill to the grave of the “Potato King” Frederick the Great at Sanssouci Palace and leave potatoes to honor the man who popularized the spud that gave us potato salad. I’m not joking.

Let’s dive in.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, Frederick the Great supposedly wanted his people to grow potatoes. When the peasants refused, the king planted a royal potato field and stationed purposely inept guards around it. The peasants, seeing something worth protecting, stole the potatoes and planted them for themselves. The king got what he wanted, the people were fed, and everyone, at least in the telling, lived happily ever after, which is what makes it such a wonderful story, even if it is also not true.

Frederick did issue at least fifteen decrees encouraging potato cultivation. But historians found little evidence for the famous guarded field. In fact, potatoes did not become common across Prussia until decades later.

Whether or not Frederick truly popularized the potato almost does not matter anymore. The story has become part of German food lore.

By the end of the eighteenth century, potatoes had become common enough that a new dish began appearing in German cookbooks and dictionaries: Kartoffelsalat, or potato salad. The earliest versions were quite simple, consisting of cold potatoes dressed with oil, vinegar, herbs, and onions, without any mayonnaise, eggs, or the kind of secret family variations that would come later.

German immigrants carried those recipes to America throughout the nineteenth century. For decades, potato salad in the United States looked much closer to those early German versions than the creamy bowl we recognize today.

Then mayonnaise arrived.

In 1905, a German immigrant named Richard Hellmann began selling mayonnaise from his delicatessen in New York. Similar commercial mayonnaise products soon appeared across the country. For the first time, home cooks could buy a consistent jar of mayonnaise instead of making it themselves. The creamy style of potato salad spread quickly. This is where the story becomes truly American.

By 1907, restaurants were already advertising "Old Fashioned Potato Salad."

In barely two years, Americans had taken a dish that was still actively being invented and rebranded it as a cherished tradition, manufacturing nostalgia for something that had no past yet, and proving that old fashioned was never about age but about how good it makes you feel to buy it.

A king who probably did not popularize potatoes. A recipe that changed dramatically in just a few generations. A bowl of food that became nostalgic almost as soon as it existed.

Top Tip

Potato has given the pairing real thought, which for him means lying in the kitchen doorway and refusing to move. His ruling is a dry German Riesling, a Mosel Trocken if you can find one. Potato Salad came over from Germany, so the wine may as well meet it at the door. The acid cuts the mayonnaise, the faint fruit forgives the mustard, and the whole bottle costs less than the potatoes if you shop badly. If there is no white in the house, a cold dry rosé will keep the peace, and Potato will accept a small crust of bread as his consulting fee.

Buell's Booth
Slide in, grab a seat. Every week, one question and one comment straight from the counter. Feel free to shoot me questions anytime!

^{"What's the one tool you'd tell someone to invest in now and never replace because it only gets better the longer you own it?"}

Cast iron. My Field Company skillet gets a little better every single time I cook on it. The seasoning builds, the surface goes smoother and more nonstick, and it'll outlast me. Buy one good pan, season it right and it’ll last forever. That's a real investment.

^{“Picked up a box of Diamond Crystal after reading this. You're right that it's easier to control than the Morton I'd been using. Seasoning as I go instead of all at the end made a bigger difference than I expected.”}

Thank you for believing in the salt game. It will go along way for those who didn’t catch last week here’s the link.

The Nostalgia Table

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