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Potato Salad

A chilled potato salad with a sweet cream dressing, eggs, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Boil the potatoes until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Chop the cooled potatoes, hard boiled eggs, and onion finely.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine sweet cream, granulated sugar, vinegar, eggs, salt, mustard, and butter.

  2. Cook the dressing over low heat until it thickens, then let it cool.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the dressing thoroughly with the chopped potatoes and let it stand for one hour before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 absorb the dressing's flavour and moisture.
Eggs
Cooking the beaten eggs into the dressing thickens it and adds richness to the salad.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the dressing smooth and creamy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing over low heat until it thickens. Eggs in the dressing will scramble if heated too quickly or too hot. Gentle, low heat lets the egg proteins set slowly and evenly, thickening the dressing smoothly without curdling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, cream, sugar, vinegar, mustard, 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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