Name: French Potato Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes; parsley; onions; mustard; pepper; coarse sea salt; vinegar; fine olive oil

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

French Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Slice cold boiled potatoes and place them in a salad bowl.
Sprinkle chopped parsley and finely chopped onions over the potatoes.
In a separate bowl, mix mustard, pepper, coarse sea salt, and vinegar.
Whisk in fine olive oil until the sauce is creamy.
Pour the sauce over the potatoes and toss gently to combine.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 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).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 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

Swap the onion

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

Broccolifits better
Lettucefits better
Horseradishfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, mustard, pepper, vinegar, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.