Skip to main content
Salad

Potato and Egg Salad

A salad of boiled eggs and potatoes mixed with French dressing and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato and Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hard boil the eggs, then remove the shells and finely chop them using a silver knife to prevent discoloration.

  2. Cook the potatoes until tender, then chop them finely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the chopped eggs and potatoes with French dressing.

  2. Chill the mixture on ice for one hour.

  3. Serve on a lettuce leaf.

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. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main protein and rich texture that gives the salad its body.
Potatoes
Add starchy bulk and a soft, tender texture to the salad.
French dressing
Adds moisture, acidity and flavour that bind the chopped eggs and potatoes together.

The step that matters

Finely chopping the eggs with a silver knife. Eggs contain sulfur compounds that react with iron in a steel blade, causing grey-green discoloration on the yolk and white. A silver knife avoids this reaction, keeping the salad looking fresh.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper. 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

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes