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Salad

Potato Savory

A chilled salad of sliced boiled potatoes, beet, hard‑boiled eggs, onion, watercress, tossed in French dressing and served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Savory

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the boiled potatoes.

  2. Chop the beet, hard boiled eggs, onion, and watercress finely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix all the chopped ingredients together.

  2. Pour a generous amount of French dressing over the mixture.

  3. Serve the salad ice cold on lettuce leaves.

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. Watercress + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 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
Provide the starchy body and bulk that holds the salad together.
Beet
Adds earthy sweetness and a deep red colour to the salad.
Eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the mixture.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness.
Watercress
Contributes a fresh, peppery bite and green aroma.
French dressing
Adds moisture, fat and acidity that bind and season the chopped ingredients.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, watercress, lettuce):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, watercress, lettuce. 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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