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Potato Salad, Hot

A warm potato salad with onions, bacon, and vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until done, then slice them thin while hot.

  2. Peel and chop the onions into small bits, then mix with the potatoes.

  3. Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry until light brown.

Dress and serve

  1. Remove the bacon and stir the vinegar into the bacon grease to make a dressing.

  2. Pour the dressing over the potato and onion mixture and mix lightly.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Potato + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

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

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, holding their shape when sliced while hot.
Onions
Add sharp, pungent flavour that mellows and sweetens slightly when cooked in the dish.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat, and its rendered grease becomes the base of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts the richness of the bacon grease and brightens the salad.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the warm potato mixture and mix lightly. Potatoes absorb dressing best while still hot, so they take up flavour evenly. Mixing gently keeps the thin slices from breaking apart and turning mushy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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