Skip to main content
Salad

Potato Salad

A salad made with mashed potatoes, cabbage, cucumber pickle, egg yolks, and a vinegar‑butter dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 722 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the mashed potatoes through a colander.

  2. In a bowl, combine the potatoes, chopped cabbage, cucumber pickle, and powdered egg yolks.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the beaten raw egg, celery seed, sugar, melted butter, flour, and vinegar.

  2. Boil the vinegar mixture, then pour it over the potato mixture.

Season and mix

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste and mix well.

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. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and carry the other ingredients.
Raw egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body and cohesion.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture when powdered into the potatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Melted butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the dressing.

The step that matters

Boil the vinegar mixture. The raw egg in the dressing must be heated while stirred so it thickens without curdling. Pouring the mixture over the potatoes only after it has thickened lets it coat them evenly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cabbage, cucumber, egg, sugar, butter, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cabbage, cucumber, egg, sugar, butter, flour. 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes