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Potato Salad

A cold salad of sliced potatoes, hard‑boiled eggs, onion, celery, walnuts, and a custard dressing made from vinegar, flour, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine vinegar, flour, butter, pepper, egg yolks, a little water, mustard, salt, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thickened into a custard.

  3. Chill the custard until cold.

  4. Fold in the whipped cream gently with a large fork.

Prepare the vegetables and eggs

  1. Slice the potatoes thinly without boiling them too soft.

  2. Slice the hard-boiled eggs thinly.

  3. Chop the onion finely.

  4. Soak the celery in salt water for 30 minutes.

  5. Cut the celery into small pieces with scissors.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the potatoes, eggs, onion, celery, and walnuts in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the dressing lightly with a two-pronged fork.

  3. Serve the salad ice-cold on lettuce leaves.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the vinegar dressing into a custard, and sliced hard-boiled eggs add body to the salad.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the custard dressing, softening its sharp vinegar taste.
Flour
Thickens the dressing together with the egg yolks as it cooks into a custard.
Whipped cream
Folded into the chilled custard to make the dressing lighter and creamier.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad, providing structure and body once sliced and combined.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Egg yolks set and thicken only within a limited heat range; if heated too hard they curdle, and if underdone the dressing stays thin.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, flour, butter, pepper, egg, sugar, 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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