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Salad

Cheap Potato Salad

A potato salad made with diced potatoes, onions, eggs, vinegar, butter, sugar, salt, pepper, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Cheap Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the onions and dice the potatoes.

  2. Season the potatoes and onions with salt, pepper, and celery seed if desired.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together.

  2. Add the vinegar to the egg mixture.

  3. Melt the butter in a skillet, then pour in the egg and vinegar mixture.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it over the potato and onion mixture.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the vinegar dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to offset the sharpness of the vinegar.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing's flavor.
Onions
Add sharp, savory aroma and crunch to the salad.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Eggs thicken when heated, but if they get too hot they can scramble into lumps. Stir constantly and heat gently until the dressing thickens, then pour it over the potatoes.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

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

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, pepper, egg, sugar, vinegar, butter. 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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