Name: English PoTATO Salad
Ingredients: ½ pound cold potatoes; green garden salad ingredients (such as lettuce, cress, or endive); 2 tablespoons vinegar; ½ teaspoon ready-made mustard; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon sugar; pepper to taste; optional: 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

English PoTATO Salad

Ingredients

½ pound cold potatoes
green garden salad ingredients (such as lettuce, cress, or endive)
2 tablespoons vinegar
½ teaspoon ready-made mustard
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 teaspoon sugar
pepper to taste
optional: 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Directions

Prepare

Cut the cold potatoes into slices.
Mix the potatoes with the green salad ingredients.

Dress and serve

In a bowl, combine vinegar, mustard, salt, sugar, and pepper (or Worcestershire sauce).
Pour the dressing over the potato mixture and toss gently.

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.

Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,340 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 and absorb the dressing's flavour.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Mustard: Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.
Sugar: Softens the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, sauce):

Horseradishfits better
Beetrootfits better
Capsicumfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, sauce. 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.