Skip to main content
Salad

Potato Salad

A chilled salad of sliced potatoes, onions, parsley, chives, dressed with vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Remove the skin and cut the potatoes into ¼ inch thick slices.

Assemble and dress

  1. In a salad bowl, layer the potato slices, sprinkling each layer with a little salt, parsley, chopped onion, and chives.

  2. Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with chopped greens on top.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the vinegar, olive oil, salt, black pepper, and sugar.

  4. Beat the dressing well with a fork and pour it over the salad.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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 and absorb the dressing as they cool and soften.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil and sugar.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, coating body.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic bite that mellows slightly in the dressing.

The step that matters

Beat the dressing well with a fork and pour it over the salad. Vinegar and oil do not mix on their own. Beating them together temporarily emulsifies the dressing so it coats the potatoes evenly instead of separating into a greasy layer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, parsley, chive, vinegar, olive, pepper, sugar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, chive, vinegar, olive, pepper, sugar. 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes