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Salad

Swiss Potato Salad

A chilled potato salad with white wine vinegar, salad oil, parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Swiss Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes and cut them into slices before they are cold.

  2. Place the sliced potatoes in a salad bowl.

Dress and rest

  1. Sprinkle the oil, vinegar, parsley, pepper, and salt over the potatoes.

  2. Stir well until thoroughly mixed.

  3. Set aside for about three hours before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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 they rest.
Salad oil
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour across the potato slices.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Slice the potatoes while still warm. Warm potatoes are more porous and absorb the oil and vinegar evenly. Once cold, they firm up and resist the dressing, so flavour stays on the surface.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, parsley, 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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