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Potato Salad, Hot

A hot potato salad with onions, bacon, and vinegar gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes until done.

  3. Slice the boiled potatoes thin while hot.

  4. Peel and chop the onions into small bits.

  5. Mix the chopped onions with the potatoes.

  6. Cut the bacon into small bits.

  7. Fry the bacon bits until light brown.

  8. Remove the bacon bits.

Dress and serve

  1. Stir the vinegar into the bacon grease to make a sour gravy.

  2. Pour the gravy and bacon over the potato and onion mixture.

  3. Mix lightly.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Potato + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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, absorbing the warm sour gravy as their starch softens.
Onions
Add sharp, pungent flavor that contrasts with the sweetness of the potatoes.
Bacon
Adds savory, smoky flavor and fat that is rendered into the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the gravy its sour bite.

The step that matters

Pour the gravy over the warm potatoes. Potatoes sliced while hot absorb dressing best because their starch is still open; cooling makes them firm and less receptive to the sour gravy, so the dressing should go on while they are still warm.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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