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French Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, olive oil, vinegar, parsley, salt, pepper, and optional onions or garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

French Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Place the potatoes in cold water with the salt and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender.

  3. Once cooled, peel the potatoes and slice them into thin rounds.

Dress and serve

  1. Layer the potato slices in a dish, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and drizzle with oil and vinegar.

  3. Adjust the oil and vinegar ratio to nearly equal, using at least 4 tablespoons of oil and 3 tablespoons of vinegar.

  4. Add thinly sliced onions or garlic for extra flavor, if desired.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the salad and absorb the oil and vinegar dressing as they sit.
Olive oil
Carries flavor and gives the potatoes a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a clean herbal flavor.

The step that matters

Dress the potatoes while they are still warm or cooled but not cold. Cooked potato starch absorbs dressing most readily when the slices are not chilled, so the oil and vinegar penetrate rather than sitting on the surface.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, parsley, olive, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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