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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, hard boiled eggs, onion, and a dressing of vinegar, egg yolks, mustard, flour, salt, sugar, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Chop the hard boiled eggs.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, egg yolks, mustard, flour, salt, sugar, and butter.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Stir in the cream and mix well.

Assemble

  1. Combine the dressing with the potatoes and eggs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the dressing between their slices.
Eggs
Add body and richness to the salad when chopped through the potatoes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a smooth sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the tang of the vinegar dressing.

The step that matters

Bring the dressing to a boil. Egg yolks thicken only when heated enough to set their proteins, but overheating can curdle them. Heat gently and stir constantly so the dressing thickens smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, vinegar, mustard, flour, sugar, butter. 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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