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Potato Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut cooked vegetables into thin slices.

  2. Wash lettuce, cress, mustard, and watercress in clean water, checking for insects.

  3. Shake the greens dry in a cloth.

  4. Arrange the greens alternately with the cooked vegetables.

  5. Sprinkle capers and scraped horseradish between each layer.

  6. Pour salad sauce over the top or serve it in a salad bottle.

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. Watercress + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Watercress + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beetroot + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, lettuce, mustard, watercress, capers, horseradish, sauce):

  1. Endivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, lettuce, mustard, watercress, capers, horseradish, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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