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Another Potato Salad

A potato salad made with mashed potatoes, salad oil, capers, vinegars, shallot, onion, salt, hard‑boiled eggs, parsley, and served with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Mash the hot potatoes and gradually mix in the salad oil until well combined.

  2. Add the capers, vinegars, shallot, onion, and salt; mix thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a serving dish and shape it nicely.

  2. Top with chopped hard-boiled eggs and garnish with capers and parsley.

  3. Surround with watercress.

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. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 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, giving it a soft, starchy base that holds the other ingredients.
Salad oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the potatoes for a smoother texture and mouthfeel.
Vinegars
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts through the richness of the oil.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and mild flavor as a topping.

The step that matters

Mash the hot potatoes and add the oil gradually. Hot potatoes absorb oil more readily and blend into a smooth, cohesive mixture. Adding the oil slowly helps it emulsify into the starch rather than separating into greasy pools.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, capers, vinegar, tarragon, shallot, egg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, capers, vinegar, tarragon, shallot, egg, parsley. 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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