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Sour Potatoes

A potato salad with a buttery, spiced sauce and poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Sour Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in their jackets until done, then peel and cut them for potato salad.

Make the sauce

  1. In a casserole dish, heat the butter and fat with the chopped onion until soft.

  2. Add the flour and stir until golden brown.

  3. Pour in the water and mix until smooth.

  4. Add the bay leaves, allspice berries, sugar, salt, and vinegar; boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the potatoes and boil very slowly for another 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Poach the eggs as desired.

  2. Just before serving, place the poached eggs on top of the potatoes and sauce, then cover with sauce.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour 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 soak up the sour sauce as they simmer.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the onion and flour base.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma as it softens in the fat.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that defines this dish.
Eggs
Add soft, rich protein to the top of the salad.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until golden brown. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred constantly to brown evenly without scorching, and the browned roux gives the sauce its colour and nutty flavour. Scorched flour turns bitter and dark.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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