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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onion, eggs, and a mustard‑olive oil dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Chop the boiled potatoes and onion finely.

  2. Chop the hard boiled eggs.

  3. Combine the potatoes, onion, eggs, and salt in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with a little salt.

  2. Add the dry mustard, then gradually mix in olive oil and vinegar until the dressing thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad in baked potato shells.

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

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

  3. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thickened, creamy dressing.
Olive oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing body and richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.
Boiled potatoes
Form the starchy base of the salad, giving body and absorbing the dressing.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, firm texture and extra richness to the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar to the yolks. Oil must be added gradually while mixing so it emulsifies into the yolks. Adding it too fast causes the dressing to split and fail to thicken.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, mustard, olive, 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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