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Salad

Potato Salad with Bacon

A potato salad made with boiled potatoes, bacon, eggs, onion, parsley, vinegar, mustard, and bacon fat, topped with bacon strips and pimento.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the hard-cooked eggs coarsely and combine with warm, seasoned potatoes.

  2. Beat together the hot bacon fat, vinegar, mustard, onion, and parsley.

  3. Stir the mixture into the potatoes.

Dress and serve

  1. When cold, add a little boiled salad dressing to bind the ingredients.

  2. Arrange the salad in a mound on a platter.

  3. Garnish with strips of cooked bacon and pimento, and pour salad dressing on top.

  4. Decorate with celery tips, watercress, celery curls, and olives if desired.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 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, absorbing the warm bacon fat and dressing.
Hard-cooked eggs
Add body and richness, with their soft texture blending into the salad.
Bacon fat
Carries flavour and moisture, coating the potatoes while still hot.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the fat.
Boiled salad dressing
Binds the ingredients together and adds moisture and creaminess.

The step that matters

Add the dressing when cold. Adding the boiled salad dressing to warm potatoes can thin it and make the salad greasy or loose. Waiting until the salad is cold lets the dressing bind the ingredients and hold its texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper. 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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