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Potato Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut any leftover new potatoes into thin slices.

  2. Place the potatoes on a dish with finely shredded salad leaves.

  3. Toss with pepper, coarse sea salt, oil, and vinegar.

  4. Sprinkle with finely minced parsley and shallot.

  5. Garnish with beetroot, hard-boiled eggs cut into rings, watercress, small radishes, cucumber, or nasturtium leaves and flowers.

  6. If using only potatoes, mix half an hour before serving; if adding salad leaves, mix just 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. Beetroot + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 (pepper, vinegar, parsley, shallot, beetroot, egg, watercress):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, parsley, shallot, beetroot, egg, watercress. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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