A New York Times essay argues potato salad, not the hot dog, best captures American identity as the United States marks its 250th year.
Decades of cookbook research — from late-19th-century recipes to 1943, 1960, 1965 and 1978 volumes — led the author to frame the dish as a shared national tradition.
Potato salad is presented as uniquely democratic because anyone can bring it to a gathering, while immigrants and regional cooks can adapt it with ingredients from gochujang to capers.
The essay also ties the dish to Black family and culinary history, saying it reflects inheritance and labor without belonging exclusively to any one group.
That mix of ubiquity, variation and ritual makes potato salad, in the author’s view, a small edible model of the country itself.