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Hot Potato Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette dressing for hot potato salad made with salt, pepper, tarragon vinegar, cider vinegar, olive oil, onion, celery, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hot Potato Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture to boiling point.

  3. Remove the lemon slices.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over cooked potatoes.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Tarragon + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Olive oil
Provides fat and a smooth body that carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, aromatic tang that brightens the dressing.
Cider vinegar
Adds further acidity, sharpening the dressing and balancing the oil.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, vegetal flavour to the dressing.
Onion
Adds sharp aroma and savoury depth to the dressing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, vinegar, pepper, olive, celery, parsley, cider):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, pepper, olive, celery, parsley, cider. 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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