Food You Can Eat: Olivia Potts’s Egg Salad

Only in America: a salad that contains (next to) no vegetables.

3/12/24 MatthewCrawley 9
This will win you no accolades from your cardiologist

I normally don’t put this much effort into egg salad but having read Olivia Potts on the subject I decided to give it a go. She wisely observed that the US of Muricca is the Kingdom of Oz when it comes to “salads” that contain little nutritional value. Fellow gluttons, this must not distract us. This is scrumpdilyicious!

Serves 4
Takes 10 mins   
Cooks 15 mins

  • 6 eggs   
  • 2 spring onions   
  • 1 stem celery   
  • 3 cornichons   
  • 1 tbsp flat leaf parsley
  • â…› lb mayonnaise [this is a weird measurement. This is about 4 tbsp. Author is British.]
  • 2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  1. First, boil the eggs. Place the eggs in a large saucepan and cover them with cold water by about an inch. Bring to a rolling boil, remove the pan from the heat, cover, and leave to stand for ten minutes.
  2. Meanwhile, finely slice the celery, spring onions, cornichons and parsley.
  3. Drain the hot water off the eggs, and let them sit under cold running water until they are cold to the touch. Peel the eggs and chop into ¼ inch pieces.
  4. In a large bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice, and then stir through the chopped eggs, celery, spring onions and parsley. Taste and add salt and pepper to season, and then use immediately, or decant into an airtight container, refrigerate and use within three days.
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About MatthewCrawley 401 Articles
I died in an automobile accident just over a century ago, right after my wife/cousin gave birth to my son.

9 Comments

    • Ah, Pink Flamingos.

      You will appreciate this, then. On New Year’s Eve we are having vegetarians over. They will eat eggs. For dinner I’m making vegetable omelets, some kind of salad, and some kind of dessert. They will be staying with us so the following morning I’ll be making bagels with lox and a schmear and also extra-cheesy scrambled eggs.

      Don’t believe the hype. You don’t necessarily need functioning carotid arteries.

  3. My little concluding contribution:

    https://www.untappedcities.com/email/8bd7244b-44e4-4e4d-8df0-595fd9b4b68c/?ref=daily-newsletter

    Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood? Your local bike shop? [No. No no no no.] A favorite restaurant? The neighborhood playground? [You would linger, childless, at a neighborhood playground?]

    Photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Vianni has been asking this question for decades [oh dear, Gabby needs some kind of intervention] and finding answers on guided walking tours led by city residents. Her new book reveals the importance of a city’s unassuming places through stunning photographs and touching stories.

  5. Egg salad is one of those things that I look at and go yep, that’s a pretty healthy Midwestern salad option.

    It’s better for you than ham salad. Definitely better for you than Snickers salad or strawberry pretzel salad. Hell, by vintage Midwestern salad definitions, the tin of Trader Joe’s Jingle Jangle that I have almost qualifies as a salad.

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