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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onions, eggs, and a butter‑vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with skins on until tender.

  2. Peel and slice the potatoes thickly while still warm.

  3. Mix the sliced potatoes with the sliced onion.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the dressing

  1. In a double boiler, beat the eggs and add the butter, vinegar, salt, and mustard.

  2. Cook slowly, stirring often.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and mix well.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the sour cream and top with slices of hard boiled egg.

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

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 while still warm.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook gently, giving it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the cooked dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness.
Sour cream
Adds tang and creaminess to the finished salad, stirred in just before serving.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing slowly, stirring often. Eggs scrambling over direct heat turn grainy and curdled. Gentle heat in a double boiler lets the egg proteins thicken the dressing smoothly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, pepper, egg, butter, vinegar, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, pepper, egg, butter, vinegar, cream. 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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