Name: Simple Potato Salad
Ingredients: potatoes; ½ onion, chopped finely; coarse sea salt; black pepper; vinegar; sweet oil; lettuce; parsley (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Simple Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes with the skins on until tender.
Let the potatoes cool, then slice them thinly.
In a bowl, combine the sliced potatoes with the chopped onion, salt, and pepper.
Gradually moisten the mixture with twice as much vinegar as sweet oil.
Transfer the salad to a dish lined with lettuce.
Keep the salad in a cool place until ready to serve.
Add chopped parsley if desired.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

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

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

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, pepper, vinegar, lettuce):

Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Dillfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, pepper, vinegar, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.