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Salad

German Potato Salad

A salad of sliced cold cooked potatoes mixed with bacon, onion, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

German Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the sliced potatoes and drain thoroughly.

  2. Add salt and pepper to taste along with the grated or sliced onion.

Make the bacon dressing

  1. Dice the bacon and fry until crisp.

  2. Add the cider vinegar to the bacon and let it come to a boil.

Combine

  1. Pour the bacon mixture over the potatoes and mix well.

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

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

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the salad, absorbing the dressing while keeping their shape.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and browned flavor that carries into the dressing.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the bacon fat.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that mellows as it sits in the dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the bacon mixture over the potatoes while it is still warm. Warm potatoes absorb the vinegar and bacon fat more readily than cold ones, so the flavor penetrates the slices instead of sitting on the surface. Mixing gently keeps the slices from breaking apart.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, cider, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, cider, 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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