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Potato Salad

A salad of sliced boiled potatoes mixed with a dressing of oil, sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, celery essence, and vinegar.

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

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes and place them in a salad dish.

  2. In a bowl, combine salad oil, sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, and essence of celery.

  3. Rub the mixture to a smooth paste.

  4. Gradually whip in the vinegar, one teaspoon at a time.

Assemble the salad

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad 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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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's flavour.
Salad oil
Carries fat-soluble flavours and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil and sugar.
Prepared mustard
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar so the dressing holds together rather than separating.

The step that matters

Gradually whip in the vinegar. Adding vinegar slowly, a teaspoon at a time, lets the oil and mustard emulsify into a stable dressing. Pouring it in all at once can cause the mixture to separate and become thin and greasy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, pepper, celery, 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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