Name: Canadian Potato Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes; blanched almonds, quartered; chopped onions; salad dressing; chopped parsley; beetroot; slices of lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Canadian Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the cold boiled potatoes.
Add the blanched and quartered almonds and a small quantity of chopped onions.
Pour over the salad dressing.
Garnish with chopped parsley, beetroot, and slices of lemon.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Almond + beetroottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together83 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together745 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes: Form the bulk of the salad and hold the dressing.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture, fat and tang that coat the potato pieces.
Blanched almonds: Add a crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft potatoes.
Chopped onions: Add a sharp, aromatic bite to the salad.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, almond, parsley, beetroot, lemon):

Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
Kalebetter flavor fit
Broccolibetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, almond, parsley, beetroot, lemon. 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.