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Simple Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, sliced onions, and a dressing of vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Simple Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then skin and slice them while hot into a covered vegetable dish.

  2. In a bowl, mix the boiling water, vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

  3. Layer the sliced onions between the layers of potatoes in the dish.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and onions, cover, and let cool.

  2. Just before serving, stir the salad gently with a fork or spoon.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 absorb the dressing while still hot.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the oil.
Oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Onions
Add sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as the salad rests.

The step that matters

Dress the potatoes while hot. Hot potatoes are porous and absorb the dressing readily, so pouring it over them while warm gives even flavour. Cold potatoes take up dressing poorly and can taste bland.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  3. Cabbageabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

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