Olivier Salad

Put the potatoes and carrots whole and unpeeled into a large pan of cold water with the 10g of fine salt.

Bring to a simmer and cook for 20-25 minutes, testing each vegetable separately with a skewer and lifting it out the moment the skewer meets no resistance.

Cook them whole and in their skins. Peeled and cubed, they take up water, give up flavour to it and collapse the moment they meet a thick dressing.

Stop before the skins split. A potato cooked that far has already started drinking.

Drain them and leave them to cool completely, which takes at least an hour on a tray or overnight in the fridge.

Boil the eggs for 9 minutes from the moment the water returns to the boil.

Cool the eggs under cold running water and peel them.

Cook the peas in boiling water for 2 minutes, then drain them and drop them straight into cold water, which stops them cooking and keeps them green.

Drain the peas again and leave them to dry on a plate.

Peel the cold potatoes and carrots, which should slip out of their skins under your thumb.

Cut the potato, carrot, egg, ham and cucumber all to the same 8mm dice.

The even dice is most of the recipe. Every spoonful should carry all of it, and pieces cut at different sizes give a bowl that reads as potato with things scattered through it.

Put the diced onion in a sieve and rinse it under cold running water for 30 seconds, then squeeze it dry in a cloth.

Rinsing takes the raw heat out of the onion. Left untreated it goes on getting stronger in the bowl, and by the second day it is the only thing anyone tastes.

Combine everything in a large bowl.

Loosen the mayonnaise with the tablespoon of cucumber brine, which makes it foldable and adds back a little of the sourness the mayonnaise flattens.

Fold the dressing through with a spatula, lifting from the bottom rather than stirring in circles, until everything is coated.

Dress it only when every component is cold. Mayonnaise on warm potato thins, separates and runs to the bottom of the bowl as oil, and there is no bringing it back.

Season with the ground peppercorns and then with fine salt, tasting first, because the ham and the pickles are already salty.

Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving, which lets the dressing take up the pickle and the salt.

Fold the dill through just before it goes on the table, so it stays green.

Keep it covered in the fridge and eat it within two days. It is raw egg dressing over cooked potato and it belongs in the fridge rather than standing out on a table all evening.

Do not freeze it. Mayonnaise separates on thawing and the potato goes grainy.