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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onions, eggs, capers, mustard, vinegar, oil, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil and slice the potatoes.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and stir in a few capers.

  3. Finely chop the onion and mix it with the potatoes.

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard boiled eggs and mix with the raw egg yolk.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon mustard, a pinch of red pepper, and a little salt.

  3. Stir in oil until the mixture is thick.

  4. Add the finely chopped egg whites and 3 tablespoons of vinegar.

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  5. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 dressing as the main body of the dish.
Eggs
Egg yolks and the raw yolk emulsify with oil to thicken the dressing; chopped whites add body.
Oil
Forms an emulsion with the egg yolks, giving the dressing its thick, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier that helps hold the oil and yolks together in a stable dressing.

The step that matters

Stir in oil until the mixture is thick. Oil must be added slowly to the egg yolks so they can emulsify it; adding it too fast causes the dressing to split and stay runny.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, onion, egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, onion, egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar. 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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