Mason-Dixon Recipes

Dilled Egg Salad

It is written, "he who makes the best egg salad shall rule over heaven and earth." Don't ask me why egg salad — I've got enough aggravation.

         — High Macha Of Rashpur, "What's Up, Tiger Lily"

No one knows, nor will ever know, who first added mayonnaise to eggs and made the first egg salad. Most likely it was mayonnaise slathered over sliced eggs sometime after the 1800s when mayonnaise was invented by chef Marie-Antoine Carême.

There were probably precursors to egg salad before mayonnaise. Cream and egg sauces were popular. Salads with layers of ingredients, including hard-boil eggs like today’s salads, were dinner dishes during the 17th and 18th century. They were called salmagundi from the Latin salemine ("salted food") and most likely were doused in cream sauces much like we add salad dressing today.

It's easy to imagine that someone got the idea to use mayonnaise in place of the cream sauces once it was invented. What was included with salads on a plate—lettuce and tomatoes—soon made their way into the sandwich, which was invented in 1756, resulting in the ubiquitous egg salad sandwiches of today.

The egg salad sandwich remains one of our most popular sandwiches. So, it isn't much of a stretch to understand how other ingredients began to make their way into egg salad to "kick it up a notch." Many things can be added to egg salad to make it more interesting. Dilled egg salad is only one possibility.

INGREDIENTS

8 whole eggs, hard-boiled and chopped
¹/₂ cup minced dill pickle
¹/₂ cup minced celery
¹/₄ cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp prepared yellow mustard
¹/₄ tsp salt
¹/₄ tsp pepper

DIRECTIONS

Cook hard-boiled eggs (refer to "How to Cook Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs"  in appendix), then peel and chop. Add other ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate and save cold.

Return to Mason-Dixon Recipes