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Hannah | A Feral Housewife's avatar

This is so cool! Most of the “hot” potato salads I know that have vinegar/bacon/etc. go by the name “German Potato Salad”. Obviously that name would’ve been a problem at the time. I’d be curious to know if it was intentionally changed because of the war, became known as German later, or is a whole different thing altogether!

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Sarah Lee's avatar

Oh interesting! I didn't realize German potato salads were vinegar based. I always thought they just used more mustard. Lol I haven't encountered any anti-German sentiments towards German recipes in newspapers or cookbooks, even after a search specifically on that. So many people here had close German heritage, so it seems they drew a line between their own background and their lives in America vs. what was going on in Europe.

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Hannah | A Feral Housewife's avatar

Yup! My grandma’s family is German, she’s the one who introduced me to it and a lot of the recipes I see in community cookbooks like that are called “German Potato Salad”!

It’s interesting people were able to separate the recipes from the ongoing conflict! I just remember the whole “Freedom Fries” debacle post-9/11, and was curious if that might have been a similar situation here with “Hot Potato Salad”.

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