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Potato Salad

A potato salad with sliced onions, boiled eggs, and a creamy dressing of vinegar, egg, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare the potatoes and onion

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Let the potatoes cool.

  3. Cut the cooled potatoes into thin slices.

  4. Slice the onion.

  5. Mix the sliced onion with the potatoes in a serving dish.

Make the vinegar dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, beaten egg, sugar, and salt. Stir constantly while cooking until the mixture thickens.

  2. Cool the thickened mixture.

Assemble and finish

  1. Layer the potatoes, dressing, and boiled egg slices in the dish until all ingredients are used.

  2. Beat the two eggs separately, then together. Mix in mustard, salt, cayenne, sugar, and vinegar.

  3. Pour the mixture into the beaten eggs. Cook slowly until it thickens to the consistency of country cream, beating hard.

  4. Slowly add melted butter while beating until smooth. Cool the mixture.

  5. Adjust with cream to desired consistency 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 carry the dressing in every layer.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and add richness to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar and butter.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the cooked dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg dressing. Eggs thicken as their proteins set from heat, but they can curdle or scramble if cooked too fast. Cook slowly while beating constantly so the dressing becomes smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, vinegar, egg, sugar, butter, mustard, pepper. 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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