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Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, eggs, walnuts, olives, French dressing, mayonnaise, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break up the walnuts, saving a dozen halves unbroken.

  2. Cut the potatoes and eggs into bits the size of your fingertip.

  3. Stone the olives and chop them.

Combine and chill

  1. Mix the potatoes, eggs, walnuts, and olives in a bowl without stirring too much.

  2. Sprinkle well with French dressing and chill in the refrigerator.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, quickly mix with stiff mayonnaise and garnish with lettuce.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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, giving it body and a soft, starchy texture.
Eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
English walnuts
Add crunch that contrasts with the soft potatoes and eggs.
Olives
Add salty, briny flavor that cuts through the richness.
Stiff mayonnaise
Binds the salad and adds fat for a creamy, moist texture.

The step that matters

Mix gently and dress just before serving. Overmixing breaks down the soft potato and egg pieces into a mush. Adding the mayonnaise only just before serving keeps the texture intact and prevents the dressing from thinning or making the salad watery.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, walnut, olive, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, walnut, olive, lettuce. 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 →

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