Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: 1 quart boiled potatoes, diced; 1 teaspoon chopped onion; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 cup vinegar; 2 tablespoons butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 3 hard-boiled eggs

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

Dice the boiled potatoes and place them in a bowl.
Sprinkle the chopped onion and parsley over the potatoes.

Make the dressing

Heat the vinegar in a saucepan until boiling.
Add the butter to the vinegar.
Season the vinegar with salt and pepper.

Garnish and serve

Boil the eggs until hard.
Cool the eggs and slice each egg lengthwise into quarters.
Garnish the potatoes with the egg quarters and pour the dressing over the salad.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 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).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 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

Boiled potatoes: Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing's flavor.
Vinegar: Provides the sharp acidity that flavors the dressing.
Butter: Adds richness and smooths the sharpness of the vinegar.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add firm texture and richness as a garnish.

Swap the onion

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

Chivefits better
Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

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