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Royal Potato Salad

A potato salad with dill, caraway seed, onion, parsley, celery seed, vinegar, olive oil, lemon, and grated raw beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Dill and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry p-mentha-1,3,8-triene, which smells camphor, herbal. The science ↓

Royal Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Scrub the small potatoes well in cold water.

  2. Place them in a pot and cover with cold water.

  3. Add a small bunch of dill or caraway seed in a cheesecloth sack.

  4. Boil the potatoes quickly, keeping the pot covered.

  5. Gradually reduce the heat as the water evaporates.

  6. Pour off the water.

  7. Return the pot uncovered to the stove until all moisture steams away.

  8. Let the potatoes cool to room temperature.

Prepare the salad

  1. For every three potatoes, finely chop one onion.

  2. Pour enough hot olive oil over the onions to cover them.

  3. Peel the potatoes.

  4. Cut the peeled potatoes into thin layers.

  5. Mix the potatoes with the onions, parsley, and a sprinkle of celery seed.

  6. Add salt to taste.

  7. Finely chop a dill pickle for every five potatoes.

  8. Mix again.

Dress and serve

  1. Heat oil in one vessel.

  2. Heat vinegar in another vessel.

  3. Use 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 teaspoon of vinegar for every four potatoes.

  4. Pour the hot vinegar over the salad first, then the oil.

  5. Flavor with lemon juice.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Potato + dilltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together423 recipes

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

  5. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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
Form the bulk of the salad, absorbing the dressing and providing its main texture.
Olive oil
Adds richness and carries flavor through the salad as a fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the oil.
Onion
Adds sharp aromatic flavor that mellows when soaked in hot oil.
Dill pickle
Adds acidity and a salty, tangy crunch.

The step that matters

Remove all moisture from the potatoes. Steaming off the water after draining lets the potatoes absorb the dressing rather than diluting it, so the salad stays well seasoned and does not become watery.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, dill, onion, olive, parsley, celery, 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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