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Potato Salad

A layered salad of cooked potatoes, onion, celery, egg yolk, parsley, dressing, lettuce, and beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Layer the cooked potato in a bowl.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with grated onion, chopped celery, pepper, salt, and strained egg yolk.

  3. Top with chopped parsley and mix with French or cooked dressing.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves and garnish with sliced or shaped beets.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potato
Forms the bulk of the salad and absorbs dressing for a moist, tender texture.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a creamy, crumbly texture to the salad.
French dressing or cooked dressing
Provides moisture and tang that coats the potato and seasons the salad.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that mellows as it sits with the dressing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, pepper, egg, parsley, lettuce):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, pepper, egg, parsley, lettuce. 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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German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

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