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Hot Potato Salad

A salad of hot boiled potatoes, bacon, onion, vinegar, cayenne pepper, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hot Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Shred the bacon and cook in a hot frying pan until crisp.

  2. Remove the bacon and sauté the chopped onion in the bacon fat until golden brown.

  3. Measure the fat, then add half the amount of vinegar, salt if needed, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Add half the amount of hot chicken stock or water and mix well.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the skins from the hot boiled potatoes and slice them into the hot mixture to absorb the liquid.

  2. Add the bacon shreds and toss everything lightly until well mixed.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Adds savory fat and crisp pieces that flavour the warm dressing.
Onion
Browns in the bacon fat, adding sweetness and savory depth to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the fat.
Hot boiled potatoes
Form the body of the salad and absorb the warm dressing as they are sliced in.
Chicken stock or water
Adds liquid that the hot potatoes absorb, carrying flavour through the salad.

The step that matters

Slice the potatoes into the hot mixture while they are still hot. Warm potatoes are porous and absorb the dressing well, while cold potatoes stay firm and resist it, leaving the salad bland and dry.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, pepper, chicken. 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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