Skip to main content
Main

Royal Potato Salad

A cold salad of boiled potatoes, onions, dill, parsley, celery seed, pickles, oil, vinegar, lemon, and optional grated raw beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Royal Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes

  1. Scrub the small potatoes well in cold water.

  2. Place them in an earthenware or graniteware pot and cover with cold water.

  3. Add the tied dill or caraway seed to the pot.

  4. Boil the potatoes quickly, keeping the pot covered and reducing heat as water evaporates.

  5. Once done, pour off the water and return the pot to the stove uncovered until all moisture steams away.

  6. Let the potatoes cool, then peel and cut them into squares.

Make the salad

  1. Finely chop the onion and mix it with the potatoes.

  2. Add finely chopped parsley, a sprinkle of celery seed, and salt to taste.

  3. Finely chop a dill pickle for every five potatoes and mix again.

  4. Heat the oil and vinegar separately, using 1 tablespoon of oil for every 3 potatoes and 1 teaspoon of vinegar for every 4 potatoes.

  5. Pour the hot vinegar over the salad first, then add the oil.

  6. Flavor with lemon juice or serve with sliced lemon and grated raw beets.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Dill + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-mentha-1,3,8-triene (camphor, herbal).

  3. Dill + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Dill + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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, holding their shape when boiled, peeled and cut.
Oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the potatoes and carrying flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the oil.
Onion
Adds sharp, savory flavor and aroma to the salad.
Dill pickle
Adds tangy, salty crunch and acidity.

The step that matters

Dressing the warm potatoes with hot vinegar first, then oil. Potatoes absorb liquids most readily while still warm, so pouring the hot vinegar over them first lets them take up its acidity and flavor. Adding the oil afterward coats the pieces without the vinegar being blocked from soaking in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, dill, parsley, celery, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, dill, parsley, celery, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes