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Salad

Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes, onions, and a custard dressing of sour cream, mustard, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with skins on until tender. Let them cool.

  2. Remove the skins and chop the potatoes.

  3. Chop the onions.

  4. Add the onions to the potatoes.

Make the dressing

  1. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, celery seed, mustard, and melted butter.

  2. Whisk sour cream, vinegar, sugar, and eggs together to make a custard.

  3. Pour the custard over the potato mixture.

  4. Stir lightly 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.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 chopped and tossed.
Eggs
Thicken the custard so it coats the potatoes richly when whisked with the sour cream.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang, and creaminess to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the creamy dressing and balances the sugar.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the potatoes for a smoother flavor.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the dressing.

The step that matters

Let the potatoes cool before adding the dressing. Warm potatoes absorb dressing unevenly and can curdle the egg custard when it is poured over them, so letting them cool keeps the dressing smooth and evenly distributed.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, celery, mustard, butter, cream, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, celery, mustard, butter, cream, 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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