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Salad

Potato Salad

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut cold boiled potatoes into ½ inch cubes.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. Add oil and mix thoroughly.

  4. Then add vinegar and optional onion juice or chives.

Garnish and serve

  1. Arrange in a mound.

  2. Garnish with chopped whites and yolks of hard boiled eggs, cold boiled red beets, and parsley.

  3. Chop egg whites and arrange on one-fourth of the mound.

  4. Chop beets finely, mix with 1 tablespoon vinegar, let stand for 15 minutes, then arrange on another fourth of the mound.

  5. Arrange chopped or riced yolks on the remaining fourth.

  6. Place small sprigs of parsley in lines dividing beets from eggs and garnish with parsley at the base.

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, giving body and a soft, starchy texture.
Oil
Coats the potato cubes, adding moisture and richness to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the oil.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and contrasting texture through the chopped whites and yolks.

The step that matters

Mix the oil into the warm-to-cold potatoes thoroughly. Oil must coat every cube so it can carry flavor and moisture. Adding vinegar afterward keeps the acid from being absorbed unevenly, so the salad tastes balanced throughout.

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.

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