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Salad

American Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes with onion, mayonnaise, and optional simple dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

American Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with skins on, then peel while hot.

  2. Cut the potatoes into small pieces, about half the size of a hickory nut.

Dress and chill

  1. Add grated onion and cover with mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Chill on ice before serving.

  3. Alternatively, slice cold potatoes and young onions, using one-third onions, and pour simple salad dressing over them.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body of the salad, holding their shape when cut and cold.
Grated onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, coating the potato pieces and keeping them moist.

The step that matters

Chill on ice before serving. Cooling firms the potato pieces and lets the dressing and onion flavors settle into them. Serving the salad warm makes it soft and the mayonnaise can separate or taste flat.

“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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