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Salad

Potato Salad, German Style

A salad of cold boiled potatoes with onions, lettuce, parsley, bacon, and elder vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 261 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad, German Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Add minced onions, shredded lettuce, and chopped parsley.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and paprika.

Make the bacon dressing

  1. Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry until golden.

  2. Add elder vinegar to the bacon and pour it hot over the salad.

  3. Toss the salad thoroughly in the bowl.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with chopped chives and serve on a salad plate.

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. Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the salad, holding their shape when sliced and tossed.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor, and its rendered fat helps carry the dressing.
Elder vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the bacon fat.
Minced onions
Contribute sharp, pungent aroma and flavor to the salad.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot bacon and vinegar over the salad. Hot fat and vinegar are poured over the cold potatoes so they absorb flavor while warm. Pouring too early or letting the bacon cool and separate can leave the dressing greasy or unevenly distributed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, lettuce, parsley, vinegar, chive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, lettuce, parsley, vinegar, chive. 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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