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Salad

Potato Salad

A potato salad made with boiled eggs, vinegar, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then remove the yolks and mash them to a pulp.

  2. Slice the cold boiled potatoes thin.

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the mashed yolks, raw eggs, vinegar, flour, oil, salt, pepper, mustard, and melted butter in a bowl and beat the mixture well.

Assemble

  1. Pour the mixture over the sliced potatoes.

  2. Add a little celery for extra flavor, if desired.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and butter to give the dressing a rich, smooth body.
Raw eggs
Bind the dressing and help it thicken when cooked or beaten into the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it clings to the potato slices instead of running off.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the eggs and butter.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsified dressing.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well. Thorough beating keeps the egg, oil, and butter blended into a smooth dressing; if it stays lumpy or separated, it will not coat the potatoes evenly.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, flour, pepper, mustard, butter, potato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, flour, pepper, mustard, butter, potato. 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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