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Salad

Irish Potato Salad

A potato salad made with boiled potatoes, eggs, mustard, olive oil or butter, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Irish Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until done.

  2. Beat the boiled potatoes until very light.

  3. Season with black pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, stir the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and the raw yolk until smooth.

  2. Slowly add the mustard, olive oil or butter, vinegar, and salt, mixing well.

  3. Chop the hard-boiled egg whites and add to the mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the potatoes and mix well.

  2. Garnish with tomatoes or parsley.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, once beaten, give it a light, fluffy body.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil or butter and mustard, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy texture.
Mustard
Helps hold the emulsion together and adds a sharp, tangy flavour.
Olive oil or butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and smoothing the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Slowly add the mustard, oil or butter, vinegar, and salt. Adding the fat gradually while mixing lets the egg yolks emulsify it into a smooth, stable dressing. Adding it all at once can cause the dressing to split and turn greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, egg, mustard, olive, vinegar, tomato. 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.

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