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Salad

Potato Salad

A salad of sliced boiled potatoes with onion, mustard, pepper, salt, butter, egg, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes thinly.

  2. Mince the onion and add it to the potatoes.

  3. Sprinkle the dry mustard, pepper, and salt over the potatoes.

Make the dressing

  1. In a frying pan, melt the walnut-sized butter.

  2. Beat the egg and mix in the vinegar.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the hot butter and let it come to a boil.

Combine

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the potatoes and mix everything together.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 warm dressing.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, helping it coat the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the warm dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour to the salad.

The step that matters

Letting the egg mixture come to a boil. Egg proteins set and thicken as they heat. Boiling the egg and vinegar mixture into the hot butter gives a smooth, cohesive dressing; if it is not heated enough, it stays thin and may not coat the potatoes well.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, mustard, pepper, butter, egg, 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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