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Potato Mayonnaise Dressing

A creamy dressing made from mashed baked potato, mustard, salt, sugar, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,458 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Potato Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Smooth and mash the inside of the baked potato.

  2. Add mustard, coarse sea salt, and powdered sugar.

  3. Mix in 1 tablespoon of vinegar and rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Stir in the olive oil and remaining vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked potato
Its smooth starch thickens the dressing and gives it a creamy body without eggs.
Olive oil
Provides fat that makes the dressing rich and emulsified into a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Powdered sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the potato through a sieve breaks up lumps and fibres so the final dressing becomes smooth rather than grainy. Skipping this makes the texture coarse.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, vinegar, 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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