Skip to main content
Salad

French Potato Salad

A salad of cold boiled potatoes with parsley, onions, mustard vinaigrette, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle chopped parsley and finely chopped onions over the potatoes.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, mix mustard, pepper, salt, and vinegar, then whisk in the olive oil until the sauce is creamy.

Assemble

  1. Pour the sauce over the potatoes and toss gently to combine.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the salad and absorb the dressing's flavour.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, and emulsifies with the mustard to make the sauce creamy.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier that helps hold the oil and vinegar together in the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Onions
Add sharp, aromatic bite to the salad.

The step that matters

Whisking the oil into the mustard and vinegar. Oil must be added slowly while whisking so it emulsifies into the mustard and vinegar. Added too fast, the sauce separates and does not turn creamy, leaving the dressing oily rather than coating the potatoes.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, parsley, mustard, pepper, vinegar, olive):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, mustard, pepper, vinegar, olive. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes