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Potato Salad

A potato salad with boiled potatoes, eggs, ham, pickles, and a dressing of salad sauce, egg yolks, Worcestershire sauce, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Combine the sliced potatoes, sliced eggs, diced ham, sweet pickle, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Mix thoroughly.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the salad sauce, raw egg yolks, cooked egg yolk, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, and pepper to prepare the dressing.

  2. Slowly stir in the sweet oil, similar to making mayonnaise.

  3. Add a few drops of lemon juice to the dressing.

Combine and garnish

  1. Pour the dressing over the potato mixture, one spoonful at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  2. Garnish with additional sliced eggs and pickles as desired.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 absorb the dressing, giving body to each bite.
Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the dressing, thickening it into a creamy, mayonnaise-like sauce.
Sweet oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the emulsified dressing.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm texture and richness to the salad.
Potted ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor and fat to the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the dressing. Oil must be added slowly while stirring so it emulsifies into the egg yolks; adding it too fast can break the dressing into separated oil and liquid.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, pepper, sauce, sugar, lemon. 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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