Name: Recipe for a Winter Salad, By Sydney Smith
Ingredients: 2 large potatoes; 2 teaspoons mustard; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 3 tablespoons olive oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 2 hard-boiled eggs, pounded; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 1 teaspoon anchovy sauce

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Recipe for a Winter Salad, By Sydney Smith

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pass the potatoes through a kitchen sieve.
Add the mustard, salt, olive oil, and vinegar to the potatoes.

Finish and serve

Mix in the pounded eggs and chopped onion.
Top with anchovy sauce and serve.

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.

Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,458 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,340 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Form the bulk and body of the salad, giving it a soft, starchy base.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and a creamy, tender texture to the mashed potato base.
Olive oil: Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour and making the salad feel rich.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps bind the oil into the potato mixture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and eggs.
Anchovy sauce: Adds savoury depth and salty umami to the finished salad.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, olive, vinegar, egg, onion, anchovy, sauce):

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, olive, vinegar, egg, onion, anchovy, sauce. 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.