Name: Hot Potato Salad Deessing
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt; ⅓ teaspoon pepper; ¼ cup tarragon vinegar; ½ cup olive oil; 2 tablespoons chopped onion; 1 cup finely chopped celery; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon cider vinegar; 2 slices lemon

Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hot Potato Salad Deessing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan.
Heat the mixture to boiling point.
Remove the lemon slices.
Pour the mixture over the potatoes.
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.

Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tarragon + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together456 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tarragon, vinegar, olive, celery, parsley, cider):

Mustardfits better
Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tarragon, vinegar, olive, celery, parsley, cider. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.