Skip to main content
Salad

Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, onions, and parsley dressed with a mustard‑vinegar‑egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with skins on, then peel and slice them into quarters.

  2. Combine the sliced potatoes, onions, and parsley in a salad dish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a small skillet, heat the vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper until hot but not boiling.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and olive oil together, then stir in the milk.

  3. Combine the egg mixture with the hot vinegar mixture until thickened like cream, but do not boil.

Assemble

  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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set gently with heat, giving it a creamy body.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the rich egg yolks.
Sliced cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing's flavour.
Olive oil
Adds fat that enriches the dressing and gives it a smooth mouthfeel.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Combine the egg mixture with the hot vinegar mixture until thickened like cream, but do not boil.. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, around the point where their proteins set. Boiling or overheating them can curdle the dressing into grainy lumps and loss of smoothness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, parsley, cider, vinegar, mustard, pepper, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, cider, vinegar, mustard, pepper, 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 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes