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Salad

Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes mixed with a dressing of egg yolk, vinegar, flour, oil, mustard, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,340 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Boil one egg hard.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Remove the yolk.

  4. Mash it with a wooden spoon.

  5. Add the raw yolk, vinegar, flour, salad oil, salt, pepper, mustard, and butter to the mashed yolk.

Serve

  1. Cut cold boiled potatoes into thin slices.

  2. Pour the mixture over the potato slices.

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. Mustard + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  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

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and butter into a smooth, creamy dressing that coats the potatoes.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a soft, creamy mouthfeel to the dressing.
Salad oil
Provides fat that thickens the dressing and carries flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it clings to the potato slices.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the salad, absorbing the dressing as the base ingredient.

The step that matters

Mash the yolk smoothly before adding the other ingredients. Mashing the hard-boiled yolk thoroughly breaks it into fine particles, so the raw yolk, oil and butter can emulsify into a smooth dressing instead of separating into greasy lumps.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

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