Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes; cucumbers; parsley; celery; chili; olives; onion; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut cold boiled potatoes into neat pieces.
Slice cucumbers lengthwise, remove seeds, and cut into small pieces.
Gather small quantities of parsley, celery, chili, olives, and onion.
Grind the green ingredients in a meat grinder.

Assemble

Squeeze out the juice and add it to the salad with plenty of mayonnaise dressing.

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.

Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes: Form the bulk of the salad and hold their shape when cut into pieces.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture, richness and fat that binds the salad together.
Cucumbers: Add moisture and a crisp, fresh texture to the salad.
Onion: Adds sharp aroma and a pungent bite to the salad.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, parsley, celery, olive, onion):

Carrotfits better
Chivefits better
Tomatofits better
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, celery, olive, onion. 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.