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Salad

Potato Salad

A salad of diced boiled potatoes, hard‑cooked eggs, onions, and seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the potatoes into dice.

  2. Chop the eggs finely.

  3. Chop the onions or slice them very thin.

  4. Sprinkle the potatoes, eggs, and onions with salt and pepper, then mix thoroughly.

Dress and finish

  1. Pour the oil gradually over the mixture, stirring and tossing continually.

  2. Mix the vinegar with the dissolved sugar and combine with the other ingredients.

  3. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the top.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the salad, holding its diced structure.
Hard-cooked eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Onions
Contribute a sharp, pungent aroma and bite that cuts through the richness.
Oil
Adds fat and smooth mouthfeel, coating the other ingredients and carrying flavour.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the fat of the oil.
Powdered sugar
Adds a slight sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pouring the oil gradually. Adding the oil slowly while stirring and tossing lets it disperse and coat the potatoes, eggs and onions evenly. Poured in quickly, it pools and separates, leaving some pieces greasy and others dry.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, onion, vinegar, parsley, sugar. 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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