Anytime Mom took her potato salad to a potluck, or to her grandson’s high school graduation party, people asked for her recipe. Actually, there are two secret ingredients, or not so secret. The same two that made Doris Neal’s deviled eggs a hit: Miracle Whip (instead of mayonnaise) and candied dill pickles.

Candied dills can be hard to find. To make your own, dissolve 2 3/4 cup of white sugar in 1/3 cup of cider vinegar. Add drained dill pickles and refrigerate about a week.

Doris Neal’s Potato Salad for a Crowd

5 pounds potatoes, cooked, cooled, cut up
8 eggs, hard cooked and peeled
2/3 cup chopped onions
1 jar candied dill pickles, chopped
1/4 cup snipped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon celery seed
2/3 of a large jar of Miracle Whip
paprika
parsley sprigs

Slice some of the eggs and save the best “rounds” for garnish. Chop remaining eggs. Mix with remaining ingredients and spoon into a serving bowl.

Mom also had a signature way to garnish her potato salad, with perfect eggs slices around edge, sprinkled with paprika, and parsley sprigs tucked in. If several potato salads arrived at a potluck, you could always tell which one was hers.

This is the closest I could find to the way Mom decorated her salad, but she arranged the eggs around the edge, with parsley springs, then paprika sprinkled only on the egg rounds.

A poignant story about the importance of the paprika.

Mom grew her own parsley, sharing the abundance with parsley caterpillars that would eventually become Swallowtail butterflies.