Skip to main content
Main

Potato Salad, Hot

A warm potato salad with onions, bacon, and a vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Potato Salad, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until done, then slice them thin while hot.

  2. Peel and chop the onions into small bits, then mix with the potatoes.

  3. Cut the bacon into small bits to fill a teacup and fry until light brown.

Dress and serve

  1. Remove the bacon and stir the vinegar into the grease to make a dressing.

  2. Pour the dressing over the potato and onion mixture and mix lightly.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Potato + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 warm dressing well when sliced hot.
Bacon
Adds savory, browned flavor and fat that carries into the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the fat and sweetness of the onions and potatoes.
Onions
Add sharp aroma and a pungent bite that mellows with cooking.

The step that matters

Dress the potatoes while they are still hot. Warm potato starch is more open and absorbs the vinegar and bacon-fat dressing readily. Once cold, the slices firm up and take on the dressing less evenly, so the salad tastes flat and greasy on the surface.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Mustardabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Broccoliabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes