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Potato Salad

A cold salad of sliced potatoes, onion, and a vinaigrette of vinegar, butter, egg yolks, mustard, and sugar.

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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in their jackets until tender.

  2. Let them cool, then peel and slice them thinly.

  3. Mix the sliced potatoes with the minced onion.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, bring the vinegar and butter to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks, salt, black pepper, mustard, and sugar. Add a little vinegar if necessary.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture into the egg mixture, stirring until smooth.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and pour the dressing over the potatoes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with slices of cold boiled eggs and parsley.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing's flavor as they are sliced.
Egg yolks
Thicken the hot vinegar mixture into a smooth, creamy dressing.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff and folded in, they lighten the dressing and add a airy texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling vinegar into the egg yolks. Pouring hot liquid onto yolks can scramble them. Adding the hot mixture gradually while stirring constantly warms the yolks gently, so the dressing thickens smoothly instead of turning lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, vinegar, butter, egg, pepper, mustard, sugar. 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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