Name: Canadian Potato Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes; ¼ cup blanched almonds, quartered; 1 tablespoon chopped onions; good salad dressing; chopped parsley for garnish; beetroot for garnish; slices of lemon for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Canadian Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the cold boiled potatoes.
Add the blanched and quartered almonds and chopped onions.
Pour over the salad dressing.
Garnish with chopped parsley, beetroot, and lemon slices.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Almond + beetroottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together83 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).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together745 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

Cold boiled potatoes: Form the bulk of the salad and give it a firm, sliceable texture.
Blanched almonds: Add a crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft potato.
Onions: Add a sharp, pungent bite that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Salad dressing: Moistens the potatoes and carries flavour through the salad.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, almond, parsley, beetroot, lemon):

Arrowrootfits better
Kalefits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, almond, parsley, beetroot, lemon. 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.