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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onion, pepper, salt, vinegar, served chilled on lettuce, optionally with hard‑boiled eggs.

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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Boil the potatoes until just tender, then slice them as thinly as possible without breaking.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped onion, pepper, and salt over the sliced potatoes.

  3. Add the vinegar and mix gently.

  4. Chill the mixture in ice until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Before serving, place the potato salad on a bed of lettuce and mix with a fork.

  2. Optionally, add sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

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

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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, providing starch and a tender body once boiled.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the dish.
Onion
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that mellows as the salad chills.

The step that matters

Slicing the hot potatoes thinly without breaking them. Potatoes are most fragile when freshly boiled and still soft. Slicing them gently while they are tender keeps the slices intact, and mixing gently afterward helps them absorb the vinegar evenly without turning mushy.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, pepper, vinegar, egg. 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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