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Potato Salad, Bennett Style

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mustard and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 207 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Potato Salad, Bennett Style

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the potatoes as described in the previous recipe.

  2. Place the potatoes in a salad bowl with the sliced gherkins.

  3. Pass the yolks of the hard boiled eggs through a fine sieve into a bowl.

  4. Add the mustard flour, anchovy paste, salt, pepper, and chopped chervil to the yolks.

  5. Dilute the mixture with oil and vinegar, then mix well.

  6. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and mix gently.

  7. Arrange the salad nicely in a bowl and garnish with halved hard boiled eggs and sliced truffles.

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. Mustard + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Potato + cherviltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cherviltop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, flour, anchovy, pepper, chervil, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, flour, anchovy, pepper, chervil, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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