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Salad

Potato Salad

A salad made with boiled potatoes, eggs, vinegar, flour, oil, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,340 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Remove yolks from hard-boiled eggs and mash them into a pulp.

  2. Add raw eggs, vinegar, flour, oil, salt, pepper, mustard, and melted butter to the yolks.

  3. Beat the mixture well until smooth.

Assemble

  1. Slice cold boiled potatoes thinly and pour the mixture over them.

  2. Add a little celery for extra flavor.

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. Mustard + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raw eggs
Bind the dressing and add richness and structure when cooked gently.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mash into a creamy base that gives the dressing body.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it clings to the potato slices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well until smooth. Thorough beating fully disperses the flour and egg yolks so the dressing stays lump-free and evenly thick. Lumps of flour or unmixed yolk will not thicken evenly and can leave pockets of raw flour taste.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, flour, pepper, 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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