Name: Hungarian Potato Salad
Ingredients: small potatoes; 1 small onion, minced; 1 pickled beet, minced; 1 fresh cucumber, sliced; 4 sardines, chopped; 1 tablespoon minced boiled ham; 1 Dutch herring, chopped; dressing of your choice

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 ↓

Hungarian Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the small potatoes thinly.
In a bowl, combine the sliced potatoes, minced onion, pickled beet, sliced cucumber, chopped sardines, minced ham, and chopped herring, then mix all ingredients together thoroughly.
Serve with a good dressing.

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).
Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + hamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,159 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Potato + hamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together127 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 and give it a tender, starchy body.
Pickled beet: Adds acidity and a deep colour that brightens the salad.
Sardines: Contribute savoury, salty richness and a firm, oily bite.
Herring: Adds salty, oily depth and a fishy richness that stands out in the mix.

Flavor stand-ins for the cucumber

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

Chivebetter flavor fit
Mustardbetter flavor fit
Leekbetter flavor fit
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, ham. 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.