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Potato Salad

A chilled salad of mashed potatoes, cabbage, pickles, egg yolks, and a vinaigrette dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 722 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Rub the mashed potatoes through a colander.

  2. Mix in the shredded cabbage, chopped cucumber or pickle, minced onion, and pounded egg yolks.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, combine boiling vinegar, melted butter, sugar, beaten egg, flour mixed with cold vinegar, celery essence, mustard, salt, and pepper. Cook and stir the dressing until smooth.

Combine and chill

  1. Mix the hot dressing with the salad. Toss the salad thoroughly.

  2. Chill until ready to 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.

  1. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  4. Potato + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and give it a soft, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the dressing and add richness and a smooth texture when mashed.
Raw egg
Thickens the hot dressing as it cooks, giving it body and a smooth, coating consistency.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing so it clings to the salad.

The step that matters

Cook and stir the dressing until smooth. The raw beaten egg and flour must be heated while stirring constantly; if heated too fast or left unstirred, the egg can scramble and the dressing turns lumpy instead of thick and smooth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cucumber, egg, vinegar, butter, sugar, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cucumber, egg, vinegar, butter, sugar, flour. 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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