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Salad

German Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onions, parsley, and a dressing of butter, vinegar, and hot water, finished with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

German Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender but not too soft.

  2. Chop the onions finely.

  3. Mix the chopped onions with the chopped parsley.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the butter, vinegar, and hot water.

  2. Add the celery seed, salt, and sugar to taste to the dressing.

  3. When the dressing is lukewarm, slowly stir in the beaten egg until smooth.

Assemble and cool

  1. Slice the hot potatoes or cut them into cubes.

  2. In a dish, layer the potatoes, onions, and parsley alternately.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad.

  4. Set the salad aside to cool.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 body of the salad, holding their shape when sliced or cubed.
Onions
Add sharp, savoury aroma and a pungent bite that mellows during standing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy, sharp character.
Egg
Thickens and emulsifies the dressing, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar for a more rounded sweet-sour flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten egg into the dressing. The dressing should be lukewarm, not hot, when the beaten egg goes in. Stirring slowly while it is warm lets the egg blend in smoothly. Too much heat can cook the egg into lumps, and stirring it in fast can leave streaks instead of a uniform, smooth dressing.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, onion, parsley, vinegar, sugar, egg):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, onion, parsley, vinegar, sugar, egg. 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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