A True Old-Fashioned Potato Salad Always Includes This Ingredient

For such a well-loved recipe, potato salad is one of those dishes that seems to spark a fair bit of debate ... for one, should it even be called a salad at all? And then there's the whole issue of ingredients: Should the potatoes be crispy or soft? Should we be adding bacon or not? Amongst all of this, however, there is one ingredient that consistently appears in a classic, old-school American potato salad recipes with no contention. Of course, we're talking about hard-boiled eggs.

Take a look through almost any old-fashioned potato salad recipe, including our own, and you'll find chopped boiled eggs mixed in with the potatoes. And there's a good reason for their inclusion in potato salad — hard boiled-eggs are great at adding something extra that doesn't overpower the rest of the salad's taste. Even when fully cooked, the yolk can easily blend into the dressing while the egg white has a similar firmness to the boiled potatoes. And egg just works really well with the rest of the ingredients, too — elements like mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, onion, and celery all complement the taste of boiled egg perfectly, while still letting the potatoes remain the rightful star of the show. They also add some protein to an otherwise carb-heavy meal.

Any potato salad that doesn't contain eggs will be notably a bit of a different dish, which you'll know if you've ever tried a German potato salad. Instead of swimming in mayo, these are dressed in a fresh and acidic vinaigrette — and it's the same across the Mediterranean, where potato salad is a dish that is all about olive oil, herbs, and vinegar. When the potato salad isn't aiming to be creamy, eggs are just not going to play the same role.

The reason eggs are such a defining feature of the classic American version is precisely because of how rich American potato salad is — the mayonnaise-and-egg combination turns it into a richer and more substantial side dish, similar to combining potato salad with devilled eggs. The yolks contribute creaminess and flavor while the whites add a little texture throughout the salad, so it would not work the same for more vinegar or oil-based dressings in quite the way it does for a mayo-based one. But creamy boiled eggs are key here. One of the best boiled egg hacks you can ever learn is avoiding chalky yolks, as this can improve potato salad just as much as it improves egg-based dishes. The result is the creamy, comforting side that so many generations of Americans have known and continue to love.