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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes mixed with French dressing, onion juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Cool the potatoes.

  3. Finely chop the potatoes.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped potatoes with French dressing.

  2. Add 4-5 drops of onion juice and 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley.

  3. Toss gently to mix and 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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, giving it body.
French dressing
Adds moisture and tangy, oily flavour that coats the potato pieces.
Onion juice
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour that brightens the potatoes.

The step that matters

Cool the potatoes before dressing. Warm potatoes absorb dressing unevenly and can make the salad greasy or soggy. Cooling them first lets the pieces hold their shape and take the dressing evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cuminfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion. 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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