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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, mayonnaise, parsley, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with skins on until tender, then let them cool completely.

  2. Once cold, dice the potatoes.

  3. Rub a mixing bowl with the garlic clove.

Make the dressed salad

  1. Grate the onion and add it to the diced potatoes.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the olive oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt, then pour over the potato mixture.

  3. Let the salad sit for one hour.

  4. After an hour, pour off any dressing not absorbed by the potatoes and mix in the mayonnaise.

Garnish and serve

  1. Sprinkle the chopped parsley over the salad and dust with paprika before serving.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  5. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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 as they rest.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the oil.
Mayonnaise
Adds creaminess and moisture to bind the salad together.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that mellows during resting.

The step that matters

Let the salad sit for one hour. Resting lets the warm-to-cool diced potatoes soak up the vinegar and oil dressing, seasoning them through. Pouring off unabsorbed dressing before adding mayonnaise keeps the salad from becoming greasy or watery.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, parsley, garlic, olive, vinegar, 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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