Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: 4 cups cold boiled potatoes, cut into ½ inch cubes; ½ tablespoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 6 hard cooked eggs, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon onion juice; boiled or mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves; cooked beets, for garnish; parsley, for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

Cut cold boiled potatoes into ½ inch cubes.
In a bowl, combine potato cubes, coarse sea salt, pepper, chopped hard cooked eggs, and onion juice.
Mix with boiled or mayonnaise dressing.

Arrange and garnish

Arrange the mixture in a mound on lettuce leaves.
Garnish with additional hard cooked eggs, cooked beets, and parsley.
Divide the mound into thirds.
On one third, add finely chopped egg whites.
On the second third, add egg yolks forced through a ricer.
On the remaining third, add finely chopped cooked beets.
Sprinkle finely chopped parsley on the dividing line between the different colors.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Form the bulk of the salad, giving body and a soft, starchy texture.
Hard cooked eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy texture throughout the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and fat, binding the potato and egg into a creamy salad.
Onion juice: Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that brightens the richness of the eggs and dressing.

Swap the onion

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

Chivefits better
Spinachfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, egg, lettuce, parsley. 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.