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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onion, olive oil and vinegar dressing, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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. Peel and boil the potatoes until just tender.

  2. Slice the onion very finely.

  3. In a bowl, combine salt and pepper, then gradually add olive oil and vinegar, stirring until emulsified.

Assemble and chill

  1. Once the potatoes are done, remove the skins and slice them.

  2. Add the potato slices to the bowl with the onions.

  3. Pour the dressing over the hot potatoes and gently mix with a fork without breaking them.

  4. Transfer to a serving dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.

  5. Garnish with additional parsley and pickled beets cut into fancy shapes. Optionally, add sardines or a teaspoon of anchovy paste to the dressing for variety.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 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

Potatoes
Form the body of the salad, absorbing dressing while holding their shape when mixed gently.
Olive oil
Provides fat and richness, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as the salad rests.

The step that matters

Dress the potatoes while still hot. Warm potato starch is porous and absorbs the dressing well, so flavour soaks in. Mixing gently with a fork keeps the slices intact rather than mashing them into a paste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, olive, vinegar, parsley. 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

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