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Potato Salad

A chilled potato salad with onions, parsley, mustard, cayenne, oil, vinegar, and hard‑boiled egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

  1. Chop the cold-boiled potatoes, onion, and parsley very finely.

  2. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

Dress and serve

  1. Mix in the dry mustard, cayenne pepper, salad oil, and vinegar thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture over the potatoes an hour before serving.

  3. Garnish with the whites of the eggs and parsley.

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

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

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.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mashed into the dressing add richness and body; whites serve as garnish.
Salad oil
Adds fat and mouthfeel, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.
Dry mustard
Adds pungent flavour and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the potatoes an hour before serving. Potatoes soak up dressing as they stand, so resting lets the vinegar and oil penetrate and flavour the pieces. Dressing added too late stays on the surface.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, 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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