When I moved to St. Louis as a new bride (yikes! more than 40 years ago), my "family recipe" for potato salad was to buy the salad, put it in my own bowl, top it with a sliced hard-cooked egg and sprinkle with paprika. When I got compliments, I would say simply that I learned the recipe from my mother, which was true. She had many specialty dishes, but potato salad was not one of them.

Over the years, I've learned a lot by reading cookbooks, examining other cooks' specialties and experimenting with ingredients and processes. I learned to make a pretty good mustard potato salad from St. Louisan Irma Rombauer, whose "Joy of Cooking" has been a standard in my family's kitchen for generations. She advised boiling the potatoes "in their jackets," that is, unpeeled.

For those who like the potatoes to sort of mush into the dressing — and I'm not knocking those who do — Rombauer's method of pouring vinaigrette dressing over warm potatoes will accomplish that nicely. She says, "Don't try to make potato salad with yesterday's cold boiled potatoes — it is not good." I disagree. In my opinion, the waxy texture of yesterday's cold boiled potatoes is exactly what you need.

My first husband's idea of "Mom's potato salad" had waxy (cold-sliced) potatoes in a mayonnaise dressing. My late mother-in-law, Marie Hick, added only celery and hard-cooked egg and lots of good mayonnaise. She made great potato salad.

Through a lot of experimenting and taste-testing, I have developed my own recipe using sweet Vidalia onions. I have put a lot of what I've learned — including food safety tips, how to hard-cook an egg that will be easy to peel and how to cook potatoes in a pressure cooker — into a recipe and cooking lesson for my daughters, both grown now with families and kitchens of their own.

This recipe has no secret ingredients. My secrets are in the selection and preparation.

• You must use Vidalia onions. Maui onions, which are smaller and much more expensive, are a suitable substitute. I have not found any other 'sweet" onions to be as good.

• You must use red potatoes about the size of a woman's fist. Small, new potatoes will not provide the same flavor, and larger potatoes will not cook as well.

• To get the right texture for the potatoes, you must follow cooking and peeling directions exactly, including using a pressure cooker. If you use the pressure cooker for no other recipe, it's still worth the purchase price. (Try garage sales).

Potatoes

1. Cook unpeeled in a pressure cooker. If using the traditional Presto type, put in 1 cup of water, then the rack and potatoes. Lock the cover and cook on high until the pressure regulator starts rocking. Turn down to medium (so that the regulator rocks gently) and cook for 10 minutes.

2. Cool the pot by holding it under cold running water until the little pressure indicator drops. Open the pot to let out steam and set the uncovered pot on the stove until the potatoes are cool enough to handle.

3. At this point, you may peel and refrigerate the potatoes or chill them with their skins on. But if you want firm, waxy potatoes for your salad, do not peel or cut them until they are cold. Otherwise, they will be mushy.

4. Slice or cut into chunks, whatever your preference. The potatoes are now ready to be mixed with the celery and onions (and chilled some more).

Celery

1. Scrub the celery with a brush or plastic pot scrubber (I keep one for just that purpose). Remove strings and peel or scrape off any soiled or brown spots. If the potato salad is for an outdoor event, peel the celery (to remove any possible trace of salmonella).

2. Chop celery and onions while the potatoes are cooking.

3. Put them together in a Tupperware bowl and refrigerate. Add to potatoes when all ingredients are chilled.

Eggs:

1. For the easiest peeling, make sure the eggs are at least a week old. Many supermarket eggs will be at least that old when you buy them, but if there is a chance they're fresher than that, leave them in your fridge for at least a week, or the shells will stick.

2. Put the eggs from the fridge into a small pot and cover with 1/2 to 1 inch of water. Put the covered pot on the stove at a high setting and watch carefully.

3. When the pot reaches a rolling boil, turn off the heat and move off the hot burner. Leave the eggs in the hot water (covered) for at least 10 minutes and no more than about 15 minutes (overcooked eggs get an ugly gray ring around the yolk).

4. Drain the pot and run under cold water until the eggs are cool enough to handle. Put the unpeeled eggs in a bowl in the fridge to chill.

5. Peel the eggs. Depending on the size of your serving bowl, leave one or two eggs whole to slice and put on top. Chop the rest to be mixed into the salad. Chill these in a separate bowl.

Mayonnaise:

No other mayonnaise will give you quite the flavor that Hellman's will. (DON'T use Miracle Whip.) If you have bought a new jar, be sure to chill it before mixing everything together. I mix half regular and half light Hellman's, for the best flavor and texture with the least fat. But if you have only one of either kind, that's acceptable.