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Potato Salad

A cold salad of cubed boiled potatoes, celery, onion, and hard boiled eggs, dressed with salad dressing and served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Cut cold boiled potatoes into cubes.

  2. Sprinkle lightly with coarse sea salt.

  3. If desired, add half the amount of celery, cut into cubes.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of minced onion for every pint of potatoes.

  5. Moisten with salad dressing and mix lightly.

  6. Optionally, add sliced hard boiled eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves or in a bowl garnished with celery leaves.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, providing starchy body that holds the dressing.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and richness, coating the potato cubes and binding the salad together.
Minced onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and extra richness to the salad.

The step that matters

Moisten with salad dressing and mix lightly. Cold potatoes can break apart when stirred vigorously, leaving a mushy salad. Gentle folding keeps the cubes intact while coating them evenly with dressing.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, lettuce, egg. 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

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