Skip to main content
Main

Winter Salad

A chilled potato salad with mustard, anchovy sauce, olive oil, vinegar, sea salt, onion, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Press the boiled potatoes through a sieve into a bowl.

  2. Add the mustard, coarse sea salt, olive oil, and vinegar to the potatoes and mix well.

  3. Mash in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Stir in the finely chopped onion.

  5. Finally, add the anchovy sauce and mix until combined.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 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

Boiled potatoes
Form the body of the salad, and sieving breaks them down into a smooth, fine texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the potatoes and carrying flavor.
Mustard
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the oil and yolks.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed in to add creamy richness and body to the potato mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Sieving the boiled potatoes. Potatoes must be warm-to-cool but still tender when pressed through a sieve; cold, undercooked potatoes resist breaking down and leave lumps, while overworked starch can turn gluey, so press gently and stop once smooth.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, olive, vinegar, egg, onion, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, olive, vinegar, egg, onion, anchovy, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes