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Irish Potato Salad

A chilled salad of mashed potatoes with butter, egg yolk, pickles, onions, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Irish Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the potatoes until thoroughly cooked, then mash them well.

  2. Cream the mashed potatoes with the butter and raw egg yolk.

  3. Finely chop the cucumber pickles and raw onion, then stir them into the mixture.

  4. Add the salt, pepper, and pickle vinegar, mixing everything well.

Serve

  1. Transfer the salad to a dish lined with celery stalks.

  2. Slice the hard boiled eggs and sprinkle them with salt and pepper on top.

  3. Serve very cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad, and mashing them creates its soft, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the mashed potatoes.
Raw egg yolk
Enriches the mash and helps bind it into a smooth, cohesive texture.
Pickle vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolk.

The step that matters

Cream the mashed potatoes with the butter and raw egg yolk. Potatoes must be thoroughly cooked and mashed smooth before the fat and yolk are added; lumps or undercooked starch resist creaming and leave a grainy texture. Adding the raw yolk to a very hot mash can also cause it to thicken unevenly.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, egg, onion, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, egg, onion, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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