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Potato Salad, Hot

A hot potato salad made with boiled potatoes, onions, bacon, and a vinegar-based gravy.

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 sliced potatoes.

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

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the bacon and stir 3 tablespoons of vinegar into the bacon grease to make a sour gravy.

  2. Pour the gravy 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 body of the salad, absorbing the warm sour gravy as they are sliced hot.
Onions
Add sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the bacon and gravy.
Bacon
Supplies fat and smoky flavor, and its grease forms the base of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the gravy its sour taste and cuts through the fat.

The step that matters

Pour the gravy over the potatoes while everything is still hot. Potatoes sliced while hot and dressed while warm absorb the fat and vinegar evenly. Once they cool, their starch firms up and they stop taking in the dressing, leaving it greasy on the surface.

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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