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Royal Potato Salad

A potato salad made with boiled small potatoes, dill or caraway seeds, onion, and hot olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and dill work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 423 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Royal Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Scrub the small potatoes well in cold water and place them in a pot.

  2. Cover the potatoes with cold water and add the dill or caraway seeds in a muslin bag.

  3. Boil the potatoes quickly, keeping the pot covered, and reduce the heat as the water evaporates.

  4. Once the potatoes are done, pour off the water and return the pot to the stove uncovered until all moisture steams away.

  5. Let the potatoes cool completely.

Add the onion

  1. For every three potatoes, finely chop one onion and pour enough hot olive oil over them to cover.

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 + dilltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together423 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Dill + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Small potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and hold their shape when boiled and cooled.
Onion
Adds sharpness and aroma that cut through the richness of the oil.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and adds richness and moisture to the salad.

The step that matters

Drying the potatoes after boiling. Pouring off the water and steaming off remaining moisture keeps the potatoes from becoming waterlogged, so they absorb the oil and dressing rather than diluting them.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, dill, olive):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, dill, 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.

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