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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, eggs, and onion dressed with a mustard‑sour cream vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Chop the potatoes, hard boiled eggs, and onion separately.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg, flour, butter, mustard, sour cream, and vinegar.

  2. Heat the mixture on the stove until it comes to a boil.

Assemble

  1. Pour the dressing over the chopped ingredients.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sugar to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 as the body of the dish.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and richness and blend into the dressing's creamy texture.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it heats and sets it into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Flour
Thickens the dressing with butter so it clings to the salad rather than running off.
Sour cream
Adds creaminess, moisture and a tangy richness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness and sugar.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing to a boil. Egg and flour thicken only when heated enough; the egg proteins set and the starch swells. Stop at a thick, smooth sauce, because overheating can curdle the egg and leave lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, flour, butter, mustard, cream, 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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