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Salad

Potato and Cucumber

A salad of boiled potatoes and sliced cucumber dressed with a vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, sour cream, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 589 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato and Cucumber

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until tender, then drain and slice them thinly.

  2. Slice the cucumber and arrange it with the potatoes in a salad bowl.

  3. Strew minced chives and chopped tarragon over the top.

Make and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix salad oil, vinegar, sour cream, and the egg; beat well.

  2. Season the dressing with salt and pepper, then pour it over the salad and serve.

  3. The salad can be served hot or cold.

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. Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together244 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 hold their shape when sliced and dressed.
Egg
Helps emulsify the dressing so the oil and vinegar blend smoothly.
Sour cream
Adds creaminess and a tangy richness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Beat the dressing well. Beating the egg with the oil, vinegar and sour cream helps form a stable emulsion, so the dressing stays smooth and coats the potatoes rather than separating.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, chive, tarragon, vinegar, cream, egg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, chive, tarragon, vinegar, cream, egg, pepper. 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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