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Salad

Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, sweet onion, and a dressing of cream, lemon juice, mustard, sugar, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the boiled potatoes into dice.

  2. Chop the sweet onion finely.

  3. Season the potatoes and onion with salt and pepper to taste and mix well.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the cream and lemon juice, beating rapidly.

  2. Add the mustard, sugar, and celery seed to the dressing and mix well.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Form the salad's body; diced pieces hold their shape and absorb the dressing.
Sweet thick cream
Provides the fat and richness that make the dressing smooth and creamy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness and sweetness.
Sweet onion
Adds sharp aromatic flavor, mellowed by its natural sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the cream.

The step that matters

Beating the cream and lemon juice. Acid causes cream proteins to thicken and can curdle it if the mixture is overbeaten or the acid is added too quickly. Beating rapidly while adding the lemon juice helps it emulsify into a smooth, thickened dressing before the other seasonings are added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, cream, lemon, mustard, sugar, celery):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, cream, lemon, mustard, sugar, celery. 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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