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Salad

Salad-dressing with Potato

A creamy dressing made from boiled potato, egg yolk, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, and salt.

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 ↓

Salad-dressing with Potato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Peel and boil the potato until tender.

  2. Mash the potato until smooth.

Make the dressing

  1. Stir in the raw egg yolk, mustard, and salt.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil and vinegar, a drop at a time, while stirring constantly until smooth.

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. Olive + vinegartop 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

Potato
Mashed to a smooth base that gives the dressing body and thickness.
Raw egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and vinegar, holding the dressing together.
Olive oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the bulk of the emulsified dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Its compounds help stabilise the emulsion and add a sharp, savoury bite.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar. Oil must be added very slowly while stirring so the droplets disperse finely and the egg yolk can emulsify them. Adding too much at once can cause the dressing to separate and stay runny or greasy.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, olive, vinegar. 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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