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Potato Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix coarse sea salt thoroughly with minced warm potatoes before adding dressing.

  2. Wash the lettuce under cold running water and let it dry.

  3. Chill all salad ingredients thoroughly.

  4. Stir mayonnaise with an egg beater for quick mixing.

  5. For smooth dressing, blend flour and sugar dry, then add boiling water and stir.

  6. If dressing curdles, add cold water and stir quickly.

  7. Heat vinegar before adding to dressing to prevent curdling.

  8. Mix mustard with milk instead of water to prevent drying out.

  9. To dispense olive oil, make a slit in the cork and prop the bottle at an angle.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  5. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, flour, sugar, vinegar, mustard, milk, olive):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, flour, sugar, vinegar, mustard, milk, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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