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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, egg yolks, sweet cream, vinegar, onion, and seasonings, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

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

  2. Cut the cooled potatoes into thin slices.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and mix with salt, white pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Stir in the sweet cream last.

  3. Pour the mixture over the sliced potatoes and garnish with parsley.

  4. If the salad is not sour enough, add more vinegar.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and cooled.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the dressing, they add richness and body that coats the potato slices.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and creaminess, giving the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the sweet cream last. Adding cream after the vinegar and seasonings keeps the dressing from curdling or thinning, and it stays smooth and clinging. Acid can split dairy when mixed too early or too strongly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, potato, cream, onion, egg, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, potato, cream, onion, egg, vinegar, parsley. 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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