Q:When I was little, my friend's mother made the absolutely best dressing on her potato salad. The only ingredients I remember are evaporated milk and mustard. It may have been a cooked dressing and it was very yellow. They were from the South, so it may have been a Southern recipe.

LaVonne White, Madison, Ala.

A: Just in time for summertime gatherings, your request spurred me to thumb through my gran's battered oak recipe box to find her potato salad recipe, which I remembered having many of the ingredients you mention.

Boiled dressing was the starting point for many of her summertime dishes, including chicken or tuna salad (omitting the mustard), and it gives a depth you won't achieve by using mayonnaise alone.

She used a full ½ cup of sugar in the dressing, but I find that a bit too much, so I suggest using 1/3 cup and adding more to taste. The evaporated milk is something she insisted on, saying plain milk would curdle, though in a pinch I might fall back on plain yogurt or sour cream.

As to origin, I've always thought the sweet and sour combination reflected her Pennsylvania Dutch-German roots, but perhaps the recipe has Southern antecedents.

Making this potato salad is a lot of work, but I made a triple batch, took it to a large picnic, and was gratified to see it disappear quickly even though there were two other potato salads on the buffet table. Many asked for the recipe. My gran would have gotten a kick out of that!

Q: There used to be a restaurant called The Studio in Coconut Grove, off Coral Way. They made a great Caesar salad as well as a chocolate mousse. Do you know anyone who would have those recipes? They were my favorites and I have never found anything that compares. They also created a wonderful chocolate cake (seven-layer) using the mousse in-between the layers.

Molly

A: People used to line up around the block to get into The Studio. Unfortunately, I don't have a recipe for the salad, though we often get requests for it. But happily, Gottfried (known as Freddi) Jossi shared the mousse recipe with Cook's Corner years before he died at age 78 in 2005. Jossi was a classically trained Swiss chef who came to the United States in the 1950s.

Q: Here's a stumper for you: When I was married in 1950, my favorite wedding present was an Osterizer. It was, I believe, the first blender, and was all the rage at the time. It came with a book of recipes. The one I want is for an avocado soup that was served cold. Believe it or not, I still use that blender, but the book has gone missing over the years.

Kate P., Miami Springs

A: Believe it or not, I wish I had that Osterizer with its cool Art Deco design. I do have a recipe booklet, dated 1949, with a recipe for a simple and delicious avocado soup. Frankly, I don't know why it calls for the gelatin (I would omit it) unless there was some perceived health benefit. The booklet is full of recipes for ''healthizer'' drinks and tips for fortifying soups or milk with liquefied vegetables. The avocado soup recipe is labeled an ``excellent alkalizer.''

SLEUTH'S CORNER

Q:I made a soup back when the weather was cold and froze it, and recently pulled it out for my family to eat. They loved it and now I can't find the recipe. I think I clipped it from a newspaper or magazine in the fall or winter of 2008. The main ingredients were broth, chickpeas, pasta and spinach, and it was finished with blue cheese. Does anyone recognize this recipe?

Join the discussion

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.