Name: Potato Bonbon
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes, cut into cubes; olives, in large bits; blanched English walnuts; stiff mayonnaise

Why it works: Olive and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,087 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Potato Bonbon

Ingredients

cold boiled potatoes, cut into cubes
olives, in large bits
blanched English walnuts
stiff mayonnaise

Directions

Make the salad

Mix equal parts of cold boiled potatoes, olives, and blanched walnuts.
Cover the mixture with stiff mayonnaise.

Serve

Serve chilled.

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.

Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,458 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together342 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes: Form the bulk of the salad, giving a soft, starchy body that the dressing coats.
Olives: Add salty, briny bursts of flavour that contrast with the rich mayonnaise.
Blanched english walnuts: Add a crisp, slightly bitter crunch that breaks up the soft texture.
Stiff mayonnaise: Adds fat and creaminess, binding the ingredients and coating them with richness.