Skip to main content
Main

Irish Potato Salad

A chilled salad of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, egg yolk, pickles, onion, vinegar, and seasonings, topped with hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Irish Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Boil the potatoes until thoroughly cooked, then mash them well.

  2. Cream the mashed potatoes with the butter and raw egg yolk.

  3. Chop the cucumber pickles and raw onion very fine, then stir them into the mixture.

  4. Add the salt, pepper, and pickle vinegar, mixing everything well.

Serve

  1. Line a salad dish with celery stalks and transfer the mixture into it.

  2. Top with sliced hard-boiled eggs and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve very cold.

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. 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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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; when mashed they give it a soft, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the mashed potato.
Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies with the butter and binds the mash into a smooth, cohesive texture.
Pickle vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the otherwise starchy, rich mixture.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm texture and mild richness as a topping.

The step that matters

Mashing and creaming the potatoes with the raw yolk. The potatoes must be fully cooked and mashed smooth before the butter and raw yolk are added, since lumps or unevenly cooked starch will stay in the finished salad. Raw yolk is also a food-safety concern, so it should be fresh and the salad kept cold.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, egg, cucumber, onion, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, egg, cucumber, onion, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes