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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes dressed with a mustard, butter, sugar, vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,340 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, mustard, salt, black pepper, butter, and sugar.

  2. Add the vinegar and cook the mixture over steam.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Slice the cooled potatoes thinly.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the sliced potatoes and mix thoroughly.

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. Mustard + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 when boiled and sliced.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and gives it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing over steam. Egg thickens when heated gently; if the mixture gets too hot it can curdle or scramble, so cook it slowly over steam and stir constantly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, pepper, butter, sugar, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, butter, sugar, 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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