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Salad

Best Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, onion, parsley, and dressing, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Best Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Slice or break the boiled potatoes into large pieces.

  2. Mix the minced onion and salad dressing with the potatoes.

  3. Combine thoroughly by turning the salad from one bowl to another three or four times.

Finish and serve

  1. Add fresh chopped parsley just before serving.

  2. For added texture, you can include cut strips of egg whites.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 dressing as the cut pieces are tossed.
Minced onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows somewhat once mixed with the other ingredients.
Salad dressing
Supplies moisture, fat and flavour that coat the potato pieces.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma that fades with time, so it goes in last.

The step that matters

Add the parsley just before serving. Chopped parsley loses its bright colour and fresh aroma quickly once cut and exposed to moisture and air. Holding it until the end keeps the salad looking and tasting fresh.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion):

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cuminabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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