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Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, cabbage, celery, and egg yolks with a vinegar-based dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the boiled potatoes through a colander and let them cool.

  2. Shred the cabbage and celery finely with a sharp knife.

  3. In a bowl, toss the potatoes, cabbage, celery, and powdered egg yolks together with a silver fork.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the beaten egg yolks, melted butter, sugar, corn-starch, salt, mustard, cayenne, and vinegar.

  2. Heat the vinegar mixture and pour it over the potato mixture, stirring well.

  3. Cook the mixture for 2 minutes while stirring constantly until it thickens.

Finish

  1. Whip the mixture into the potato salad and set aside until 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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Beaten yolks thicken the dressing as they cook and add richness to the salad.
Boiled potatoes
Mealy potatoes form the body of the salad and soak up the dressing.
Butter
Melted butter adds fat, smoothness and richness to the dressing.
Corn-starch
Starch swells with heat and helps the dressing thicken.
Vinegar
Vinegar adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sugar adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing until it thickens. Egg yolks and starch thicken only with gentle, constant stirring over heat. If the mixture is left unstirred or runs too hot, the yolks can scramble into lumps and the dressing will not stay smooth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, egg, butter, sugar, corn, mustard):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, egg, butter, sugar, corn, mustard. 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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