Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes; fresh celery; hard boiled eggs; mayonnaise or cream dressing; celery tops for garnish

Why it works: Potato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,047 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and mix

Cut cold boiled potatoes and fresh celery into small pieces.
Dice four hard boiled eggs and mix them lightly with the potatoes and celery.
Add mayonnaise or cream dressing and mix well.

Serve

Garnish with celery tops and serve.

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.

Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,863 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42,166 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,978 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and hold their shape when cut into pieces.
Fresh celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, slightly sharp flavour against the soft potatoes.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Mayonnaise or cream dressing: Adds fat and moisture that binds the salad and carries its flavour.