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Salad

Saratoga Potatoes

A potato and egg salad with onion, mustard, anchovy sauce, olive oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Saratoga Potatoes

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Saratoga Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pass the boiled potatoes through a kitchen sieve.

  2. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and mix them with the potatoes.

  3. Add the finely chopped onion, mustard, and salt.

  4. Pour in the olive oil and vinegar, then mix well.

  5. Finally, add the anchovy sauce and stir to combine.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Form the body of the salad, becoming creamy when pushed through a sieve.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and soft texture that bind into the potato base.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the eggs and oil.
Olive oil
Adds fat and moisture, giving the salad a smooth, coating texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through the fat.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savoury depth, a salty umami note that rounds out the flavour.

The step that matters

Pour in the olive oil and vinegar, then mix well. Oil and vinegar do not mix on their own, so thorough stirring is needed to emulsify them into the potato so the dressing coats evenly rather than pooling.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, onion, mustard, olive, vinegar, anchovy, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, onion, mustard, olive, vinegar, anchovy, sauce. 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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