Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: boiled potatoes; pickled cucumbers; onions; chillies; anchovies; capers or nasturtiums; salad mixture

Why it works: Cucumber and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cut boiled potatoes into thin slices.
Chop pickled cucumbers, onions, and chillies very small.
Add one or two anchovies and some capers or nasturtiums.
Serve with a salad mixture.

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.

Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + caperstop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together224 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).