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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, ham, eggs, celery, and a vinaigrette dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then slice them.

Make the salad

  1. Mix the hot potatoes with ham, onion, celery, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of vinegar to the mixture while it's still hot.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, cream the hard boiled eggs with mustard.

  2. Gradually add olive oil and the remaining vinegar to the egg mixture.

  3. Pour the dressing over the potato salad before serving.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 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 hold their shape once boiled and sliced.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and seasons the potatoes while they are still hot.
Hard boiled eggs
Creamed into the dressing, giving it body and richness.
Olive oil
Adds fat that emulsifies into the egg mixture, giving the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour and meatiness to the salad.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar while the potatoes are hot. Hot potatoes are porous and absorb vinegar and seasoning readily, so adding vinegar while they are still warm flavours them throughout. Once cooled, they absorb far less.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ham, egg, celery, olive, pepper, mustard):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ham, egg, celery, olive, pepper, mustard. 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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