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Salad

Potato Salad

A chilled potato salad with parsley, onion, chives, and a vinegar‑olive oil dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Remove the skin and slice the potatoes into ¼ inch thick slices.

Assemble and dress

  1. In a salad bowl, layer the potato slices, sprinkling with a little salt, parsley, onion, and chives.

  2. Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with chopped greens on top.

  3. In a separate bowl, whisk together vinegar, olive oil, salt, black pepper, and sugar.

  4. Pour the dressing over the salad and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Parsley + chivetop 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 hold their shape when boiled until tender.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich body.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows somewhat with the dressing.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Let the potatoes cool before slicing and layering. Warm potatoes are fragile and can break apart when sliced, and they absorb dressing unevenly. Letting them cool to a comfortable temperature keeps slices intact and lets them take in the dressing well.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, parsley, chive, vinegar, olive, pepper, sugar):

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

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