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Opelika Sweet Potato Salad

A sweet potato salad with parsley, eggs, gherkins, capers, and a warm egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Opelika Sweet Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad base

  1. Slice the cold boiled sweet potatoes and place them in a bowl.

  2. Add the minced parsley, chopped hard-boiled eggs, onion juice, coarse sea salt, and cayenne to the bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks, then add olive oil and cold water and cook until thickened.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in powdered mace, lemon juice, salt, gherkins, and capers.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Arrange the sweet potato mixture in a mold or salad bowl and pour the dressing over it.

  2. Garnish with stuffed olives and slices of pickled beet.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and provide its starchy, soft body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook with the oil and water, giving it a creamy body.
Olive oil
Adds richness and fat, giving the cooked dressing a smooth, silky texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add set egg texture and body to the salad mixture.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich dressing.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing until thickened. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if they get too hot they can scramble and curdle. Keep the heat low and stir constantly so the dressing turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, parsley, egg, onion, olive, lemon, capers):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, parsley, egg, onion, olive, lemon, capers. 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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