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Salad

Onion Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes and onions dressed with vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Onion Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and prepare

  1. Cook the potatoes with skins on until tender.

  2. Peel and cut the potatoes into rings.

Assemble and dress

  1. Layer the potato rings and onion rings in a salad dish.

  2. In a small bowl, mix lukewarm water, vinegar, sugar, and salt to make a dressing.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad, allowing it to drain off, and repeat several times.

  4. Sprinkle one side of the salad with black pepper and the other side with red pepper.

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

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing as its main body.
Onions
Add sharp aroma and flavour that mellows as the salad sits in the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Pouring the dressing over the salad and letting it drain. Dressing applied in several light passes lets the warm potato absorb the acid and sweetness evenly. Pouring it all at once leaves the top soggy and the lower layers bland.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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