Why it works: Chive and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Potato Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil the potatoes until tender, then dry and cut them into slices.
Place the potato slices in a salad bowl.
Dress and serve
Sprinkle chopped parsley, chives, and chervil over the potatoes.
Mix the oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper together, then pour over the salad.
Stir well and serve lukewarm.
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.
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Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together370 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together774 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together34,122 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together611 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,150 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Form the body of the salad, cooked until tender and then sliced.
- Oil
- Adds fat and carries flavour through the dressing.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
The step that matters
Dry the potatoes before dressing. Potatoes that are still wet will dilute the oil and vinegar, so the dressing slides off instead of coating the slices and the flavour stays thin.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, parsley, chive, chervil):
- Shallotfits better
- Lettucefits better
- Okrafits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, parsley, chive, chervil. 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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