Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: 1½ cups boiled potatoes, diced; 2 tablespoons raw minced onion; 2 tablespoons salad oil or melted butter; pepper to taste; lemon juice to taste; cold boiled carrot or beet, diced (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

1½ cups boiled potatoes, diced
2 tablespoons raw minced onion
2 tablespoons salad oil or melted butter
pepper to taste
lemon juice to taste
cold boiled carrot or beet, diced (optional)

Directions

Dice the boiled potatoes into ¼ inch pieces.
In a bowl, combine the diced potatoes, minced onion, salad oil or melted butter, and pepper, then add lemon juice to taste.
For variety, mix in some cold boiled carrot or beet, also diced.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 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, providing the main body and starchy texture.
Salad oil or melted butter: Adds fat and moisture, coating the potatoes and carrying flavour.
Raw minced onion: Adds sharp, pungent flavour and aroma to the salad.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, butter, pepper, lemon):

Chivefits about as well
Okrafits about as well
Leekfits about as well
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, butter, pepper, lemon. 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.