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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes layered with onion, celery, parsley, and a butter‑vinegar dressing, finished with hard‑boiled egg quarters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the salt, sugar, mustard, and pepper, then add the vinegar and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the milk and cook, stirring constantly, until thick.

  4. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten eggs.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line a salad bowl with lettuce.

  2. Layer the potatoes, sprinkling with onion, celery, and parsley.

  3. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with a layer of dressing on top.

  4. Garnish with quarters of hard-boiled eggs and celery leaves.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 absorb the dressing as they are layered.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing when folded into the hot custard-like sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the dressing base.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess to the dressing as it thickens on the stove.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the dressing. Stir constantly while the milk cooks, because the mixture can scorch on the bottom of the pan and it must thicken evenly before the eggs are added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, parsley, vinegar, sugar, mustard, butter. 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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