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Potato Salad

A chilled potato salad with a creamy mustard dressing and egg yolk, finished with beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Combine the potatoes, common salt, celery salt, and onion in a bowl, and mix well.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolk with salt, sugar, pepper, mustard, and lemon juice until blended.

  2. Scald the cream in a double boiler.

  3. Mix cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  4. Add the mixture to the cream and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Add the butter to the cream mixture.

  6. Gradually pour the butter mixture into the egg yolk mixture, stirring continuously.

  7. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks.

  8. Fold the beaten egg white into the combined mixtures.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the potato mixture.

  2. Serve.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 and absorb the dressing's flavour.
Egg yolk
Thickens the dressing and helps emulsify the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream mixture so the dressing holds together.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it lightens the dressing and gives it an airy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the butter mixture to the egg yolk. Pouring the hot cream mixture into the yolks too quickly, or without constant stirring, can scramble the yolk and leave the dressing lumpy. Adding it gradually while stirring gently warms the yolk so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard, lemon):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard, lemon. 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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