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Salad

Potato Salad

A salad of sliced cold potatoes with pickled cabbage, beetroot, parsley, watercress, and a dressing of oil, vinegar, pepper, salt, parsley, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cold potatoes into round or oblong slices, about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Rub a salad bowl with a small cut onion and a clove of garlic or shallot.

  3. Layer the potato slices in rows in the bowl.

Garnish and dress

  1. Garnish with pickled red cabbage, slices of pickled beetroot, sprigs of parsley, and small bunches of watercress.

  2. Pour over a dressing made of ⅔ cup oil, ⅓ cup vinegar, pepper, coarse sea salt, chopped parsley, and a pinch of cayenne.

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. Beetroot + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + beetroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

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

  5. Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 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 potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and hold the dressing between their slices.
Oil
Carries fat-soluble flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, cabbage, beetroot, parsley, watercress, vinegar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, cabbage, beetroot, parsley, watercress, vinegar. 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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