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Potato Salad, Hot

A warm potato salad with onions, bacon, and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 the potatoes and onions

  1. Peel the potatoes, then boil them until done.

  2. Slice the potatoes thin while hot.

  3. Peel and chop the onions into small bits.

  4. Mix the onions with the potatoes.

Make the bacon sauce

  1. Cut the bacon into small bits and fry until light brown.

  2. Remove the bacon.

  3. Stir the vinegar into the bacon grease to make a sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the sauce and bacon over the potato and onion mixture and mix lightly.

  2. 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 body of the salad and absorb the warm dressing.
Onions
Add sharp, savory flavor that cuts through the richness of the bacon.
Breakfast bacon
Provides fat and smoky, savory flavor through its rendered grease.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fatty bacon grease.

The step that matters

Slice the potatoes while hot. Warm potatoes are firm yet tender and absorb the sauce readily, while cooled potatoes become crumbly and resist dressing. Slicing them thin while hot helps them soak up the vinegar and bacon grease evenly.

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.

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