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Salad

Millard Potato Salad

A potato salad made with boiled potatoes, bacon drippings, celery, onion, green pepper, cucumber, peas, peanuts, pimolas, and boiled salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Millard Potato Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. While the potatoes are hot, slice them and pour the drippings from the bacon over them.

  2. When the potatoes are cold, add the celery, onion, green pepper, cucumber, cold peas, salted peanuts, and pimolas. Mix in the boiled salad dressing.

  3. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the base of the salad, giving bulk and a soft, starchy texture.
Bacon drippings
Add fat and smoky flavour that coats the warm potatoes.
Boiled salad dressing
Adds moisture and tang, binding the salad together.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, slightly bitter crunch.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows with the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Dress the potatoes while they are hot. Warm potatoes absorb the bacon drippings more readily, so the fat and flavour spread through the potato. Adding the dressing only after they cool lets the potatoes stay evenly seasoned without becoming greasy or mushy.

Flavor stand-ins for the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, onion, pepper, cucumber, peas, lettuce):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  3. Lentilsbetter flavor fit
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, onion, pepper, cucumber, peas, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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