Skip to main content
Main

Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, cucumber, onion, garlic, and mayonnaise dressed with oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with the skins on.

  2. Drain the potatoes and shake them near an open window to dry.

  3. Remove the skins from the potatoes.

  4. Cut the potatoes into dice.

Make the dressing and marinate

  1. Rub the salad bowl with the garlic.

  2. Chop the onion very finely or grate it.

  3. Add the onion to the bowl with the potatoes.

  4. Pour the dressing made from salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar over the salad.

  5. Set aside in a cool place for one hour.

Finish the salad

  1. Pare the cucumber.

  2. Soak the cucumber in ice water for one hour.

  3. Cut the cucumber into dice.

  4. Add the cucumber dice to the potatoes along with the mayonnaise.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 absorb the dressing as they cool and soften.
Mayonnaise
Adds creamy richness and moisture that binds the salad together.
Oil
Carries flavour and adds fat, giving the dressing a smooth, rounded body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of oil and mayonnaise.
Cucumber
Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture to the salad.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the potatoes before dressing them. Surface water dilutes the dressing and stops it clinging to the potato pieces, so the salad turns watery and bland. Drying near air flow lets the surface dry before cutting and dressing.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cucumber, onion, garlic, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cucumber, onion, garlic, vinegar, parsley. 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes