Skip to main content
Main

Potato Salad

A chilled salad of cubed boiled potatoes, eggs, beets, and herbs dressed with oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a large bowl, combine the potatoes, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the oil and mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and optional onion juice or chives.

  4. Arrange the mixture in a mound on a serving plate.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Chop the whites and yolks of the hard boiled eggs separately.

  2. Chop the beets finely, mix with 1 tablespoon vinegar, and let stand for 15 minutes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish the mound with the chopped egg whites, beets, and yolks.

  2. Use parsley to decorate the base and divide the beets from the eggs.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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.
Oil
Adds fat and coats the potatoes, giving a richer mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the fat.
Eggs
Add richness and contrasting texture as a chopped garnish.
Beets
Add colour and a mildly sweet, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Letting the chopped beets stand with vinegar. Vinegar softens the beets' earthy taste and sets their colour, while keeping them separate from the other garnishes stops the strong red colour from staining them.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, vinegar, chive, egg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, vinegar, chive, egg, parsley. 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes