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Salad

Potato Salad

A chilled salad of sliced boiled potatoes, onion, and hard‑boiled egg yolks dressed with mustard, sugar, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes and onion.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, cream the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Beat in the sugar, prepared mustard, white mustard seed, salad oil, and vinegar until smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad and chill until served.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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's flavour.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Creamed into the dressing to make it rich and smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Salad oil
Adds fat that gives the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour to the salad.

The step that matters

Beat the dressing until smooth. Creaming the yolks with the sugar, mustard, oil and vinegar helps the oil emulsify into the dressing. If it is not beaten well, the oil can separate and the dressing turns greasy and uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, egg, sugar, 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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