In Potato Salad We Trust

Summary

Cannonball with Wesley Morris: "In Potato Salad We Trust"

The New York Times Podcast – July 2, 2026

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Overview:

In honor of America’s 250th birthday (the semiquincentennial), critic Wesley Morris uses potato salad as a lens for examining American identity, community, and history. By engaging with chef-historians, local New Yorkers, and culinary experts, Morris investigates why potato salad—multifarious, adaptable, and crowd-sourced—deserves a place as America’s unofficial national dish. The discussion ranges from cultural and familial traditions to the bigger questions of belonging and the hidden histories behind the ways we gather and eat.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Potato Salad? A Personal and National Symbol

• Potato salad as America’s most optimistic dish: Morris frames potato salad as the perfect symbol for American possibility and inclusivity—adaptable, beloved, and reinterpreted endlessly.
  • “Potato salad is the most optimistic dish we have…because anybody can put it there…that handful of other stuff can vary enough to incorporate anybody and everybody, their culture, their people's food ways into ours.” (Wesley Morris, 01:17)
• A dish of many identities: Every culture and family puts its own spin on potato salad—Jewish, German, Japanese, Nepali, deli-style, bodega-style—a testament to American diversity.
• Bringing potato salad as an act of belonging:
  • “It’s the dish that indicates an earnest desire to understand this place.” (Wesley Morris, 01:33)

2. Union Square Farmer’s Market: Americans on Potato Salad

Morris ventures into NYC to collect opinions and family secrets.

• Preferences and taboos: Eggs? Mayo? Peppers?

  • "Can't be too runny. It has to congeal nice." (Young Interviewee, 03:56)
  • “Just keep the eggs out of it.” (Wesley Morris, 04:01)
  • “No eggs.” (Restaurant Owner/Korean Heritage Speaker, 04:03)
  • “No mayonnaise, no onions, no celery.” (Young Interviewee, 04:11)

• Young Interviewee (age 13):

  • Describes “great grandma Lil’s potato salad” – potatoes, celery, mustard, mayo, red onion, “classic American.”
  • Notes secret southern family ingredients: “She has a secret ingredient that I can't tell…” (Young Interviewee, 05:22)

• Improvisation & creativity:

  • “My mother never cooked according to a recipe, she just did it. And that's like blues.” (Podcast Guest 1, 05:35)
  • “That's like jazz. That's like dancing.” (Restaurant Owner/Korean Heritage Speaker, 05:41)

• Restaurant Owner, Korean Heritage:

  • Highlights the lighter, more acidic Japanese and Korean styles, using pickled vegetables and Kewpie mayo.
  • “You have so many choices of variations, just like this country, especially New York City. We’re all different, but then we're all American.” (Restaurant Owner/Korean Heritage Speaker, 07:03)

3. Mayonnaise Wars & Potato Salad Debates

Different mayonnaise brands as badges of regional and cultural identity (Kewpie, Dukes, Hellmann's)—each brings unique taste and lineage to the dish.

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4. The Personal is Historical: Wesley’s Family Potato Salad

• Personal family traditions: Morris recounts being his mother’s potato salad prep assistant, and the importance of trust and skill in assembling the dish.
  • “You can trust a child with a paring knife, but you can't trust a child with seasoning.” (Wesley Morris, 10:36)
• Discovering roots in Black cookbooks:
  • Realizes his family’s recipe is a direct descendant of Black southern potato salads found in 19th-century cookbooks.
  • “What I discovered was that the family potato salad that my great grandmother had been making, that I, you know, inherited from my mother, is just black potato salad. It is essentially the recorded potato salad that I saw in a cookbook from 1876.” (Wesley Morris, 27:00)

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5. Talking History: Dr. Jessica B. Harris on Potato Salad’s American Story

Renowned scholar and author of “High on the Hog,” Dr. Jessica B. Harris unpacks potato salad’s tangled origin and evolution.

a. Origins & Evolution

• Probable German origin (“hot German potato salad” with vinaigrette, sometimes bacon), spreading to the Midwest and the South, where African American cooks adapted the dish.
• Mayonnaise as a dividing line: Enters common U.S. use in the mid-to-late 19th century; marks the split between major styles.
• “Cultural and racial divide” between Black and White southern versions, still potent today.
  • “There is all of that. But I also think at some point, most of us, many of us, have stopped fat-shaming folks. Maybe we need to stop potato-salad-shaming folks. ‘Cause there's a whole lot of side-eye that goes with the potato salad.” (Dr. Jessica B. Harris, 19:29)

b. Personal Connections and Reluctance

• Harris isn’t a huge potato lover but honors her mother’s basic recipe—potatoes, onion, celery, sometimes hardboiled eggs, “it’s always been about potatoes, not about seasoned mayonnaise.” (Dr. Jessica B. Harris, 18:15)
• Contrasts “minimalist” versus “maximalist” approaches: “Do you want raisins in your coleslaw? No.” (Dr. Jessica B. Harris, 18:44)

c. Potato Salad and Identity Politics

• The loaded question: “Who’s bringing the potato salad?” carries assumptions about authenticity, taste, and belonging.
• Reference to the famous “Black Jeopardy” SNL sketch with Chadwick Boseman:
  • “Oh hell no, Karen. Keep your bland ass potato salad to yourself.” (Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, Black Jeopardy SNL, 24:10)
• Harris: deciding who eats whose potato salad reveals lines of race, culinary skill, and social trust often left unspoken.

d. Transmission of Foodways

• “So many years, we were the ones who were making it. So other people’s tastes were formed by our cooking… That’s that hand that is transforming basically, the taste of a nation.” (Dr. Jessica B. Harris, 28:50)
• The Black version’s becoming the “standard” for many Americans highlights the hidden influence of Black cooks in shaping national taste.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Wesley Morris (opening thesis):

  • “Potato salad is the most optimistic dish we have that we've ever had. Not because it's the most delicious or the prettiest… but it's because anybody can put it there.” (01:17)

• On the diversity of recipes:

  • “Every American people, lots of people in America, generations deep, now have their version of potato salad.” (Wesley Morris, 02:01)

• On tradition vs. innovation:

  • "Traditional dishes shouldn’t be changed." (Young Interviewee, 04:27)

• On side-eye and social policing:

  • “…there's a whole lot of side-eye that goes with the potato salad…” (Dr. Jessica B. Harris, 19:29)

• SNL’s Black Jeopardy, cultural shorthand:

  • “So something tells me that I should say, say it. Oh, hell no, Carrie, keep your bland ass potato salad to yourself.” (Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, 24:10)

• On the transmission of culinary tradition:

  • “We don't necessarily have those little boxes with the recipe cards in them that somebody wrote the recipe down. Absolutely.” (Dr. Jessica B. Harris, 27:44)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:40–03:21: Wesley’s monologue on why potato salad is essential; set-up of the episode.
• 03:22–07:48: At the Union Square Farmers Market: public and chefs’ opinions on the right (and wrong) way to make potato salad.
• 09:50–11:46: Wesley’s family story, his mom’s potato salad, connecting personal and collective recipes.
• 12:32–29:54: In-depth conversation with Dr. Jessica B. Harris—origins, race, family, oral traditions, and cultural meaning of potato salad.
• 22:08–24:31: Black Jeopardy SNL sketch used as a cultural touchstone about potato salad and division.
• 29:54–30:30: Closing reflections; Harris on Black potato salad as the “standard,” and the complex influence of Black cooks on American foodways.
• 30:30–end: Credits, wrap-up, and acknowledgments.

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Conclusion

“In Potato Salad We Trust” is more than just a food episode; it’s a meditation on community and inheritance. Morris, through humor and candor, reveals how the humble bowl of potato salad holds stories of migration, adaptation, and shared experience. Whether you side-eye raisins or swear by Kewpie, you’re part of the American potato salad conversation—and maybe, in a small way, part of the larger experiment of American pluralism.

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For more, watch the video version of Morris making his family’s potato salad on YouTube.

Transcript

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[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball Today. Hey America, Happy birthday to ya. Happy birthday. I'm bringing potato salad.

[Young Interviewee]

Happy birthday.

[Wesley Morris]

As you no doubt have heard, this Fourth of July, the United States of America turns 250 years old. And for the last couple of months, I have found myself spending an obsessive amount of time thinking about what this country is, what it's been, what it could be. And I kept coming back to one thought about one dish as this beacon of hope, as this symbol of possibility. Potato salad. Yes. What I'm saying is this potato salad is the greatest thing you can put on a table in this country. I'm saying it. And what I'm saying is that potato salad, potato salad is the most optimistic dish we have that we've ever had. Not because it's the most delicious or the prettiest, although, you know, I've had both, but it's because anybody can put it there. Sure, it's just potatoes and a bunch of other stuff, but when the new or newish arrived in this country, somehow they learn that this is the dish you bring to a gathering. It's the dish that indicates an earnest desire to understand this place. And you've heard that this bowl of lubricated tubers is the way to go. And while, yes, it's just some potatoes and some other stuff, that handful of other stuff can vary enough to incorporate anybody and everybody, their culture, their people's food ways into ours. Every American people, lots of people in America, generations deep, now have their version of potato salad. Jewish deli, Japanese, German, Calabrian, Nepali, bodega. And all those people have opinions about their potato salad. So a couple days ago, I went to a very New York City place to talk to them about what they think about potato salad.

[Young Interviewee]

I'm in Union Square at the Union

[Wesley Morris]

Square Farmers Market, just to Talk to people and hear about their feelings about potato salad. You're just minding your business, walking by, and I. We grabbed you to talk about potato salad.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Potato salad.

[Wesley Morris]

Feelings about potato salad. Is it in your life?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

It is somewhat in my life. Oh, talk to me if my cousin's cooking it.

[Wesley Morris]

Who hurt you? A lot of people.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

A lot of people on Thanksgiving.

[Podcast Guest 1]

Okay. Because if it's not.

[Wesley Morris]

If the flavor's not right, I'm not

[Podcast Guest 1]

going to eat it.

[Wesley Morris]

If it doesn't look right, I'm not going to eat.

[Young Interviewee]

Can't be too runny. It has to have, like. It has to congeal. Nice.

[Wesley Morris]

Just keep the eggs out of it.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

No eggs.

[Podcast Guest 1]

No.

[Wesley Morris]

Even if, like. Do you. What? If you don't know whether there is an egg, you can tell.

[Young Interviewee]

I really just love potatoes, so. But when I make. But when I make a potato salad, it has to have no mayonnaise in it. No mayo, no onions, no celery. I've had somebody try to make me with peppers.

[Wesley Morris]

Like, oh, yeah, that's a red pepper.

[Young Interviewee]

Sometimes green peppers. And, you know, people do it. It's just. It doesn't go right for me because I feel it's just a very traditional dish, and I feel traditional dishes shouldn't be changed. And how old are you? Thirteen.

[Wesley Morris]

So what's your family's potato salad?

[Young Interviewee]

Family's potato salad is for sure my great grandma Lil's potato salad. You've got, like, the potatoes, there's always celery, always mustard, mayo. What else? Red onion. Yeah, it sounds right.

[Wesley Morris]

That's like classic American. What the cookbook would say is some version of a classic American potato.

[Young Interviewee]

Exactly. You. Do you toast some sesame seeds.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Okay.

[Podcast Guest 1]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

Automatically we're in a different potato salad.

[Apple Card Announcer]

Yes.

[Young Interviewee]

It's a different version of it. It's special to Nepal. My godmom makes a very good Southern potato salad. And she has a secret ingredient that I can't tell because she's.

[Wesley Morris]

Do you know it?

[Young Interviewee]

Yes, but I can't tell because it's

[Wesley Morris]

her very animal mineral, vegetable.

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

No,

[Podcast Guest 1]

my mother never cooked. According to a recipe, she just did it.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Podcast Guest 1]

And that's like blues.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

That's like jazz. That's like dancing.

[Wesley Morris]

She would improvise her way to a potato salad.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

There you go.

[Wesley Morris]

You got quite a haul, sir.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

Yeah. I own a couple of restaurants, so I do most of my shopping here.

[Wesley Morris]

Which restaurant? The lrc.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

That's okay. That's okay. Meju in Long Island City.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, my God. Listen, I made a date to get a table for September 1st because y' all do it a month out.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

I'll be there.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

In Korea, where it's myheritage and similar to Japan as well, we have a completely different kind of potato salad. Much lighter, a lot more acidic, and a little sweeter.

[Wesley Morris]

Where's the acid coming from? Is it coming from vinegar?

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

We pickle cucumbers and carrots.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

And that's where it's coming from. Lots of red onions. And we also use, you know, mustard and mayo as well, but it's not the most healthiest ingredient. But Asians, we believe in kewpie mayo, which is the mayo to use in potato salad.

[Wesley Morris]

Three mayonnaise.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

There's dukes, there's kewpie, and there's helmet.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

Yes, you're right in that everybody makes it differently.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, yeah.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

And you have so many choices of variations, just like this country, especially New York City, We're. We're all different, but then we're all American.

[Young Interviewee]

Right.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

But then also the ingredients. Potatoes. There's, like, 20 different kinds of potatoes. You can use mayo, different kinds of mustards, and the different kinds of vegetables that you put in. As long as the potatoes are cooked all the way, I think as long as that is taken care of, you really can't mess up a potato salad.

[Wesley Morris]

Cook the potatoes all the way, people. It's not that hard.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

As long as that's taken care of. I mean, it has to turn out delicious.

[Wesley Morris]

Ari, this is great. Oh, you did great. All right, thank you.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

Thank you. My pleasure.

[Wesley Morris]

Be right back.

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[Wesley Morris]

I'm insisting that potato salad is a national dish the way we have national parks and a national anthem. But it couldn't be our national dish if it wasn't a million different kinds of personal first. You heard the people. You've got your version and your version and your version. And me. I've got mine. It started with my mother, who was born Judith Laverne Smith and she liked her potato salad oniony, bit you back. And from around 11 I was her potato salad prep guy. This meant mincing onions. When it was time to add the paprika, the salt, the pepper, and the all but accidental pinch of sugar my mother used, she took over. And her logic for taking over basically went like this. You can trust a child with a paring knife, but you can't trust a child with seasoning. People love my mother's potato salad. My grandmother stopped making her own because she came to prefer her daughters, because that reminded her of of her own mother's. This is the potato salad that I make. It's what I bring to parties. But only when I started thinking about it as America's dish did I also start considering that our potato salad was something more than what my mother learned from her grandmother. I started studying recipes and old cookbooks. I pestered chefs and friends who were very opinionated food encyclopedias and more than once but somebody would say, just talk to Jessica, for God's sake.

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

So

[Wesley Morris]

I did. I turned where many a person with questions about the story of American food turned Jessica B. Harris. Doctor Harris is a historian, the acclaimed and esteemed author of too many books to count. Most invaluably though High on The Hog, her 15 year old masterpiece that, among other achievements, connects African American foodways to Africa's. Doctor Jessica B. Harris, one of our great food ways historians.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Oi One of oh.

[Wesley Morris]

Oy. Oh no.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Oy.

[Wesley Morris]

You have earned this.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Yeah, yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

And you know I, you know, a lot of the work that you have done, I mean, what has brought me to you, I should say, is

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

this

[Wesley Morris]

feeling that I have about potato salad.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Oh, my. And

[Wesley Morris]

I think it's the ideal. It's the ideal food for the stated aspirations of this country. Right. Like the things that we're always saying. We believe in this promise of equality, this promise of humanity, of civility, this republic of ours. I feel like potato salad is a very good forum for these Republican ideas. And I don't know, I just sort of. I believe this. And I guess what I'm coming to you for is a couple of things. The first is to the extent that you can tell me a story about potato salad in the United States, what would it be?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Well, I would think the first part of the story would be that food and food history is not absolute. Who did the first potato salad? Well, we think it was the Germans, but we could be wrong. So. But anyhow, it gets over. It gets adopted in many places. It goes to the Midwest, it goes to the South. Then it begins to mix with African American food ways and traditions. And you get all different kinds of potato salad. You get a more. Well, you get something that I grew up knowing as hot German potato salad.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Which is a warm potato salad salad with a kind of almost vinaigrette dressing. It may have bacon, but it's got a lot of things. Then you get some of the potato salads of the Midwest, and they may have sour cream, they may have sour cream. And maybe nowadays instead of sour cream, yogurt or something like that, that gives it a little bit more tang. Again, they may have the bacon or the cured pork product of some sort mixed in there. Not quite the dill, not quite the things that you might have in the hot German potato salad. And then you get to the south where you get the one that most black people know, which is the mayonnaise based one. And that kind of came into use as mayonnaise was getting popularized in this country. You gotta kinda not just look at the salad, but look at the. Some of the ingredients and how they went together to make it up. And then once you get that mayonnaise Y1, then you begin to get all of the variants that come out of that.

[Wesley Morris]

Where are we in time? Once the mayonnaise becomes a factor in

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

the distinction between mayonnaise comes in to kind of general common usage, mid to late 19th century.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay. In the U.S. in the U.S. okay, okay.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

No, no, that's pretty much it. And then you get the kind of cultural and racial divide between the black potato salad and the white potato salad out of the South.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

And that is deep and, you know, personally held thing that, you know, folks get. You know, who's bringing the potato salad? Kind of stuff.

[Wesley Morris]

Can I ask it the way it typically gets asked, which is who is bringing the potato salad?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Yeah, okay, you can ask that, but I can answer it and say it won't be me.

[Wesley Morris]

Wait, what?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

It will not be me.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, Dr. Harris, you have at least two recipes that I have read for potato salad.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

I didn't say I couldn't make it.

[Wesley Morris]

No, I know.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

You said I was not bringing it.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, Juanit, can you talk to me about your relationship with this dish?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

I have a very sort of convoluted relationship with potato salad.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay, take me to the beginning.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Okay. Beginning is I'm not a lover of potatoes. So that's just me. And it's purely personal.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

I nibbled around my mother's potato salad. My mother made good potato salad. Nobody, you know, if they said, rhoda's bringing the potato salad. Everybody was there with their plate, you know, but it's like, okay, thanks, mama.

[Wesley Morris]

What was hers? What was her potato salad?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

She was pretty basic, certainly. Potatoes.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Little bit of onion, little bit of celery. I am not sure about the hard boiled eggs.

[Wesley Morris]

Mm.

[Podcast Guest 1]

Okay.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

I'm really not sure about that.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, the recipe that you published that was based on your mother's recipe. So you said there were two ingredients that were different. You didn't specify which two on the side. But, I mean, you basically did it. I mean, Yukon golds, celery, eggs, onion, relish.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Okay, so there were eggs. Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

Mayonnaise, salt, pepper. That's the potato salad.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Yeah. I mean, it's always been about potatoes, not about seasoned mayonnaise.

[Wesley Morris]

I agree.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Or whatever. So there's that kind of puristy aspect to it. But I contend that things like potato salad, coleslaw, and rice pudding, there are the minimalists and then the maximalists. Do you want raisins in your coleslaw? No.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, let's.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Do you want raisins in your. You know, Dr. Harris.

[Podcast Guest 1]

No.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

I'm saying. No. I'm with you, Juan. No. The answer is just not totally with you, Juan.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

No.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

But there are some people for whom the answer is, oh, my goodness, you can't make it without.

[Wesley Morris]

But this is the spirit of this conversation that I want to have with myself about this dish and what all it can include, despite how I feel about it. You know, it doesn't matter what I think is wrong with your potato salad. The fact of the matter is, you are free to make it however you want because this is a dish that can handle it.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

But equally, not only are you free to make it however you want, I'm also free not to eat it.

[Wesley Morris]

Not to eat it. Yes. Amen.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

So there is all of that. But I also think that at some point, most of us, many of us, have stopped fat shaming folks. Maybe we need to stop potato salad shaming, folks. Cause there's a whole lot of side eye that goes with the potato salad. Like, you know that, Dr. Harris.

[Wesley Morris]

It is deep because I've side my eye, I'm sure, many a time. So I actually have a summational question here, which is like, am I wrong to think this about this dish?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Am I.

[Wesley Morris]

Am I. Am I asking too much of potato salad? Am I wrong to be offering potato salad as something that is emblematic of that Declaration of independence and promise for life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, everything else in that document?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

I start growling at some point, but I'm not sure.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, I mean, I guess this is a thing we can talk about is its actual relationship to enslavement. Right. And its relationship to African American history. I was looking for something that at least its contests are really about what is in the dish. It's usually not about the history of who made the dish historically. And so I am probably doing something that is perhaps too idealistic in trying to sidestep some of the ugly history to offer potato salad as, I don't know, being innocent or less fraught with respect to, you know, this country's actual history.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Well, I mean, I think the thing is that you sidestep it by asking that question.

[Wesley Morris]

How do you mean?

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Who's gonna bring the potato salad? Once you've asked that question, you have already made some assumptions about what kind of potato salad you want so that the hard discussion is not there. You know, the hard.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, say more about what a more direct and honest asking of that question would be.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Um, okay, I'm gonna ask you a question. It's a question that y' all might end up clipping because it references a television show.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, you've come to the right show to talk about a television show.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Okay. Well, the Saturday Night Live.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, the Black Jeopardy.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

This is Black Jeopardy.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Yes. Well, there you go.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

Yeah. All right.

[Wesley Morris]

What up, what up, what up? The Black Jeopardy. Just.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

And you explain it.

[Wesley Morris]

This is the infamous, notorious, classic, legendary Chadwick Boseman. This is so Exciting all the way from Wakanda is t' Challa appears on Black Jeopardy On Saturday Night Live as. As t' Challa from Black Panther.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

There you go.

[Podcast Guest 1]

Greetings, Daniel. I am a big fan of this program.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

This might be the blackest Black Jeopardy yet.

[Wesley Morris]

Let's take a look at our. Okay, so the category is white people. In this sketch, I am ready.

[Podcast Guest 1]

Let's go to white people for 400.

[Wesley Morris]

Your friend Karen brings her potato salad to your cookout. And t' Challa Chadwick Boseman asked t' Challa from Black Panther.

[Podcast Guest 1]

I think I'm getting the hang of this. Before I answer a few questions. This woman, Karen, she is Caucasian.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Podcast Guest 1]

And she has her own recipe for potato salad. Ah, I understand. It is noble that she would volunteer to cook for everyone. And although I have never had potato salad, of course, I sense that this white woman does not season her food. That's right. And. And if she does, it is only with a tiny bit of salt.

[Wesley Morris]

That's exactly right.

[Podcast Guest 1]

And no paprika. No paprika. No. She will probably add something unnecessary like raisins.

[Restaurant Owner / Korean Heritage Speaker]

I know, right?

[Podcast Guest 1]

So something tells me that I should say, say it. Oh, hell no, Carrie, keep your brand ass potato salad to yourself.

[Wesley Morris]

His answer is, you know, oh, hell no, Karen. Keep your bland ass potato salad to yourself. The point being this sketch having t' Challa be the representative. Even t' Challa knows that there's a potato salad we don't want.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Even t'. Challa. T', Challa, of course, knows.

[Wesley Morris]

So, I mean, I guess, what am I missing then? What is the more.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Well, I mean, I think that's the hard discussion about potato salad that skips things. You know, it's how does your potato salad get seasoned? What's going into it? And I think that that's the hard conversation that we don't have about the potato salad and about the perhaps lines of demarcation about the potato salad and about why that question gets asked. It's not just about race. It's about ability. It's about taste profiles. It's about, you know, all kinds of things that don't get talked about. It's that hard conversation.

[Wesley Morris]

You're saying this, and I gotta tell you something. I started this musing. I've been thinking about this for more than a year. And along the way, I've just been really assuming certain things about the potato salad that I've been making all this time. But once I started to sort of look at these old cookbooks from, like, you know, the late 19th century and, you know, the first half of the 20th century, especially the black ones, are the ones where, you know, we're to assume that the author is black because, you know, how.

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

You know.

[Wesley Morris]

You know better than anybody how some of these books got created. And I am surprised. And I was moved by the discovery that, you know, my. The thing I thought was, you know, my family recipe, which is, you know, the nine ingredients. We do everything that's in. That's in your variation on your mother's. On your mother's dish. I. We add, like, a hot paprika or a sweet paprika.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Right. But it's essentially the same. Add it to the mayonnaise or put it on the top as cotton. It's just in the mixture.

[Wesley Morris]

So you're just.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Oh, it's in the mixture. Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

You're just mixing it all together.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

What I discovered was that the family potato salad that my great grandmother had been making, that I, you know, inherited from my mother, is just black potato salad. It is essentially the recorded potato salad that I saw in a cookbook from 1876. And I was really moved to have been connected to this history. But it also is saying to me that we are carrying something on that doesn't necessarily, you know. Cause, like, music and stories. I mean, I think recipes are part of an oral tradition for us because.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

No, absolutely. We don't necessarily have those little boxes with the recipe cards in them that somebody wrote the recipe down. Absolutely.

[Wesley Morris]

So I don't know. I just was. I did not. You know, part of me was like, I don't want this to be a story of, you know, this, you know, really important contribution that black people have made to this country. Because I want this to be a dish that everybody makes and brings to the cookout.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

But then who's cookout? Who's eating? And when the dish gets put down on the table, how many people serve themselves from it? They may make the dish, but when the dish is on the table at the cookout, who's eating out of that dish? Is it just their relatives or is it everybody?

[Wesley Morris]

Would you contend that the way that we make potato salad is the everybody dish?

[Young Interviewee]

Hmm.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

I'm not sure I might stand up on some of that. But the way we make a lot of stuff is the everybody dish. Because for so many years, we were the ones who were making it. So other people's tastes were formed by our cooking. Think of how many households had black folks as. I'm not talking about restaurants now. I'm talking about households with black folks, as housekeepers or as cooks as that. That's that hand that is transforming basically, the taste of a nation. And that's not just the south. That's the country. And so that's one of the reasons I would opine, like my big word that the black potato salad has come so close to becoming for many people, not all people, the Standard.

[Wesley Morris]

Dr. Harris, thank you so much for doing this.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

You're welcome.

[Wesley Morris]

I really appreciate it. I mean, I. I don't know. I don't know. It's a pleasure to talk to you. You know, I've read you for years, and you've made my kitchen smell really good on a number of occasions.

[Apple Card Announcer]

Thank you.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Probably not with potato salad.

[Wesley Morris]

Definitely not with potato salad. If that's the case, I'm doing something wrong. Or I'm making German potato salad where you pour the dressing over the potato salad itself. Right. It's dressed in the bacon fat.

[Dr. Jessica B. Harris]

Yep.

[Wesley Morris]

Wow, that is deep. I'll be right back. You know, I'm making this whole recipe in the video version of this show, and if you want to see me do it, hop on over to YouTube where I am going to. I'm going to make my family's potato salad recipe from scratch. This episode of Cannonball was produced by John White and Janelle Anderson. It was edited by Lisa Tobin and Austin Mitchell. It was engineered by Daniel Ramirez and recorded by Matty Masiello, Kyle Grandillo, Nick Pittman and Samantha Winter, plus Florent Barbier. The photo for our show art is by Bobby Doherty. Our audience team is Katie o' Brien and Maria Abdulkoff. Our video team is Felice Liad, Amy Marino and Brooke Minters. This episode was filmed by Lauren Pruitt, Andrew Smith, Luke Piotrowski and Sir John Stojikovic. Esteban Veras was our gaffer. It was edited by Mark Zemel, Jeremy Rocklin and Hayden Frielin. Our show's fellow is Gabby Contreras. Our original music is by Dan Powell and Diane Wong. Our theme music is by Justin Ellington. Big thanks to the folks at New York Times cooking. Emily Weinstein, Genevieve Koh, Kat Baldwin and Caitlin Wayne, who was our food producer for this episode. You guys were great. God bless. You're the best extra. July 4th fireworks for the following people because, I mean, they did some work here, too. Bonnie Slotnick at Bonnie Slotnick's Cookbooks. Legend. Bonnie, you are a legend. Dave Chang, Francis Lamb, Bill Addison, Deborah First, Cheryl Julian, another legend, Robin Tompkins, Tasha Muhammad and Carol Hannah Harris. Happy birthday, Aunt Carol. I love y'. All. We are on YouTube and we'll be back next week. The most alive I've ever been. But kiss me and I might drop dead. Thanks for listening, everybody. Happy 4th of July to you all.

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