Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: 1 quart chopped potatoes; coarse sea salt to taste; onions to taste; ½ cup sour cream; 2 teaspoons sugar; 1 teaspoon ground mustard; vinegar to taste

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

Combine the chopped potatoes, salt, and onions in a large bowl.
Mix the sour cream, sugar, ground mustard, and vinegar in a separate bowl.
Pour the dressing over the potato mixture and stir to combine.

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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,340 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Provide the bulk and starchy body of the salad.
Sour cream: Adds richness, moisture and tang that coat the potatoes.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness.
Sugar: Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Ground mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavor that lifts the creamy dressing.
Onions: Add sharp, aromatic bite.

Swap the potato

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

Horseradishfits better
Broccolifits better
Chivefits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cream, 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.