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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onion, celery, egg whites, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt, pepper, mustard, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the boiled potatoes.

  2. Finely chop the onion and celery.

  3. Chop the whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

Make the dressing and combine

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with salt, pepper, mustard, oil, and vinegar to taste.

  2. Combine all ingredients 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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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 hold the dressing between their soft slices.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with oil and mustard to make a creamy, rich dressing.
Egg whites
Add chopped texture and mild body without melting into the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk dressing.

The step that matters

Mixing the yolks with oil. Oil must be added gradually to egg yolks, with mustard helping, so they emulsify into a smooth dressing. Adding it too fast can split the mixture into greasy droplets.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, egg, pepper, mustard, 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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