Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: cooked beetroot, sliced; cooked potatoes, sliced; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; Mayonnaise Sauce (see recipe No. 44); 3 tablespoons of cold cream

Why it works: Beetroot and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 330 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the cooked beetroot and potatoes to the thickness of a penny.
Sprinkle the slices with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Dress and serve

Prepare the Mayonnaise Sauce and mix in 3 tablespoons of cold cream.
Pour the sauce over the salad before serving.

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.

Beetroot + potatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beetroot + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,682 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked beetroot: Provides the main colour and an earthy flavour to the salad.
Cooked potatoes: Make up the bulk of the salad and give it a soft, starchy body.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds moisture and richness, coating the slices and binding the salad together.
Cold cream: Adds fat that makes the dressing smoother and richer.