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Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, onion, celery, egg whites, dressed with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, topped with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the potatoes, onion, celery, and chopped egg whites.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour the dressing over the potato mixture and mix thoroughly.

  4. Sprinkle the strained egg yolks over the salad.

Season and serve

  1. Let the salad sit until seasoned thoroughly.

  2. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing as the body of the dish.
Olive oil
Carries fat-soluble flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, coating texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and eggs.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and creamy texture from the yolks and mild body from the whites.

The step that matters

Let the salad sit until seasoned thoroughly. Cold potatoes are dense and absorb dressing slowly, so resting lets the salt, vinegar and oil penetrate. Tasting only right after mixing can leave the salad under-seasoned and sharp on the surface.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, egg, olive, vinegar, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, egg, olive, vinegar, pepper, lettuce. 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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