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Potato Salad

A chilled salad of sliced boiled potatoes, eggs, onion, and a dressing of mustard, sweet cream, vinegar, and egg whites.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes very thin.

  2. Slice the hard-boiled eggs thinly.

  3. Chop the small onion.

Assemble and dress

  1. In a glass bowl, layer potatoes, eggs, and sprinkle with onion, salt, and pepper.

  2. For dressing, stir the egg yolk with mustard, then beat in the sweet cream and add vinegar to taste.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg white until frothy.

Serve

  1. If needed for supper, prepare in advance.

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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and hold the dressing as thin slices.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness through their cooked yolks and whites.
Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies with the mustard and cream to thicken the dressing.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and smoothness, mellowing the dressing's sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Beaten egg white
Adds air and a light, frothy texture to the dressing.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the whipped egg white's air trapped, so the dressing stays light and frothy. Stirring hard would deflate it and make the salad heavier.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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