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Potato Salad

A chilled salad of sliced potatoes, olives, capers, cucumbers or celery, onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon, mayonnaise, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a large bowl, combine the sliced potatoes, chopped olives, capers, cucumbers or celery, and finely chopped onion.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

  3. Add mayonnaise dressing and mix well.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, fold in the whipped cream gently.

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. Capers + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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 give it a soft, starchy body.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture that bind the salad and carry the seasoning.
Heavy whipping cream
Whipped air and fat make the dressing lighter and creamier when folded in.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Olives
Contribute salty, briny flavor that complements the potatoes and capers.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream gently, just before serving. Whipped cream is a foam of trapped air. Vigorous stirring or waiting too long deflates it, leaving the salad dense and loose rather than light and creamy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, olive, capers, cucumber, onion, lemon, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, olive, capers, cucumber, onion, lemon, cream. 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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