Skip to main content
Salad

Potato Salad

A salad of diced potatoes, green pepper, olives, cucumber, onion, celery, and egg whites, dressed with French or mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cold diced potatoes, green pepper, olives, cucumber, grated onion, celery, and egg whites.

  2. Add the salt and mix well.

  3. Blend the mixture with either French or mayonnaise dressing.

Serve

  1. Heap the salad on a serving dish.

  2. Decorate the top with the sieved egg yolks.

  3. Garnish the sides with radishes and sprigs of parsley.

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. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Olive + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

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 body and a soft, starchy texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a creamy texture through the whites and sieved yolks.
French or mayonnaise dressing
Binds the ingredients together and adds moisture and fat.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the salad.
Cucumber
Adds moisture and cool, crisp texture.

The step that matters

Blend the dressing in gently. Cold diced potatoes can break apart or turn mushy if stirred too vigorously, so folding the dressing in gently keeps the pieces intact while coating them evenly.

Swap the radish

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, olive, cucumber, onion, celery, 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes