Name: Potato with Bacon
Ingredients: 5 boiled potatoes; 2 tablespoons vinegar; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 onion, chopped; 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped; 4 to 5 slices of bacon; Lettuce leaves for serving

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 ↓

Potato with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

Slice the boiled potatoes and dress them with vinegar, salt, and pepper.
Add the chopped onion and hard boiled eggs to the potatoes.
Fry the bacon slices until crisp, then break them into small pieces.
Add the bacon and some of the bacon drippings to the salad.

Serve

Serve the salad 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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 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

Potatoes: Form the bulk of the salad, absorbing the vinegar dressing as they are sliced.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the bacon and eggs.
Bacon: Supplies salty, savoury flavour and fat from its crisp pieces and drippings.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and soft texture that contrasts with the potatoes.
Onion: Adds sharp, aromatic bite to the salad.

Swap the lettuce

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

Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Mustardfits better
Lettucethe original

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